


Copyright N°. 


2 - 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 








YOUNG EARNEST 


✓ 





i 



























YOUNG EARNEST 

THE ROMANCE OF A 
BAD START IN LIFE 


BY 

GILBERT CANNAN 

Author of “Old Mole,” “Round the Corner.” 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1915 


/ 



Now my question is : have you a scheme of life 
consonant with the spirit of modern philosophy 
— with the views of intelligent, moral, humane 
human beings of this period ? 

The Adventures of Harry Richmond. 


FEB -6 1915 

Copyright, 1915, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

©CIA393538 

^-0 t 


To 

O. M. 


Words skilled and woven do not make a book 
Except some truth in beauty shine in it. 

I bring you this because you overlook 
My faults to follow out my probing wit. 

And where it fails or falls short of its aim, 

You see design and waste nor praise nor blame 
On the achievement. Stirring to the will, 

Your wit still urges mine to greater skill. 



CONTENTS 

BOOK ONE 
LINDA BROCK 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Love in Earnest 



• 



PAGE 

3 

II. 

i 66 Hog Lane West . 



• 



13 

III. 

George Married 



• 



29 

IV. 

A Return . 



• 



41 

V. 

Settling Down 



• 



5 i 

VI. 

Professor Sm allman 



• 



60 

VII. 

Flying Near the Candle 


• 



71 

VIII. 

Intimacy . 



• 



85 

IX. 

Paterfamilias . 



• 



98 

X. 

Honeymoon w * 



• 



109 

XI. 

Matrimony 



• 



130 

XII. 

Escape 



• 



147 


BOOK 

TWO 







ANN PIDDUCK 





I. 

Adventure in London 


• 

• 

• 

. 

157 

II. 

Mitcham Mews 


• 

• 

• 

. 

169 

III. 

Mr. Martin 


• 

• 

• 

. 

182 

IV. 

Learning a Trade . 


• 

• 

• 

. 

196 

V. 

Together . 


• 

• 

• 

. 

206 

VI. 

Kilner ... 


• 

• 

• 

. 

219 

VII. 

Old Lunt . 


• 

S 

! 


226 


vii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

VIII. Rita and Joe 236 

IX. Talk . . . 254 

X. An Encounter ....... 270 

XI. Vision 277 

XII. Settlement 285 

BOOK THREE 

CATHLEEN BENTLEY 

I. Meeting 301 

II. Happiness 31 1 

III. The West Wind 322 

IV. Explanation . . . . . . . 331 

V. Thrigsby ........ 343 

VI. The Comfort of Religion .... 362 

VII. Casey’s Venture * 370 

VIII. Thriving 382 

IX. Young Love Dreaming ..... 388 



BOOK ONE 
LINDA BROCK 


Ha! Ha! 

So you take human nature upon trust? 


I 


LOVE IN EARNEST 

O that joy so soon should waste 
Or so sweet a bliss 
As a kiss 

Might not forever last ! 

TT annoyed the young man that at such a time, in 
* such a place, he should be thinking of his father. 
Waiting for his beloved, he desired to have no thought 
but for her ; most loyal intention sadly unfulfilled, for 
he could think only of his father, first as a wondrous 
being who could skillfully become at will an elephant or 
a zebra, or more tranquilly fascinate and absorb by 
waggling his ears with no disturbance of his face. 
The young man, John Rene Fourmy, could more 
clearly remember his father’s ears than his features. 
He was introspective enough to know that his tender- 
ness for the young woman, his melting anticipation of 
her coming, had led him back to the first adoration 
of his life, and from that to the tragedy of its oblitera- 
tion. 

Came the distressing recollection of his father’s 
downfall, devastating for the boy of three who had 
witnessed it. He could visualize it clearly, so sharp 
had been the cruel impression, the indignity of it. The 
bedroom in the little house in the country where they 

3 


YOUNG EARNEST 


had lived near Billy Lummas and Sam Ardwick, who 
had fits in the road. A room full of bed. In that bed 
his father and himself eager for the moment when 
his father should arise from his bed and fill the world, 
and his mother apparently just as eager because she 
was entreating and imploring. Only the more did his 
father wrap himself in the bedclothes. These sud- 
denly were torn down amid peals of laughter; a fond 
scuffle, though the boy perceived not the fondness; 
up went his father’s nightshirt, his long body was 
turned over and it was slapped resoundingly on that 
place considerately designed by nature to receive such 
onslaughts. The slapping was done with the back 
of a hairbrush, an instrument that, in alternation with 
a slipper, was used upon himself. That a man, that 
a glorious father should suffer, and, because he suf- 
fered, deserve such an indignity, was too much. A 
shadow came over the world, and Rene remembered 
flinging himself down by the bed and shedding pas- 
sionate tears for the departed glory. Thereafter his 
father was no wonder to him, he too was subject to the 
authority of his mother, and became henceforth only 
a tyrannous buffoon, nervously kind or noisily angry. 

Then Rene remembered the return from the coun- 
try to a succession of houses in streets; his father 
just risen from his bed as he came home to dinner 
at midday; bottles of whisky and boxes of cigarettes. 
And when at school they asked him what his father 
was, he used to reply, “A gentleman. And he went 
to a public school,” that being the formula which 
had been given to him to account for existence and 

4 


LOVE IN EARNEST 


all its puzzlements. Public school and heaven were 
for a long time confounded in his mind, and the for- 
mula had accounted adequately for his father’s Elijah- 
like disappearance from the scene when Rene was ten. 

That was all he knew, and there was the sting of 
injustice in this present intrusion in the Scottish glen, 
hallowed by the delights of a young love which boy 
and girl had arranged should shake the world into a 
wonder at its glory. A sordid family history was a 
clog upon romance, and our young man was that ear- 
nest creature, a romantic. 

A stolen love, for she lived at the great house taken 
by her father for the sport of the autumn months, 
and he was staying with his great-aunt Janet, an ex- 
governess, in the village, as he had done ever since he 
was eleven, for his holidays. 

Now he was nearly twenty, wonderfully in love, 
punctual to his appointment, striving for romantic 
thoughts and able to achieve nothing but these humili- 
ating memories of his father. He tried singing; that 
was of no avail. It did but call to mind his father’s 
songs. He threw pebbles into the burn, but they gave 
him no amusement. Then from his pocket he drew an 
anthology of love — poems from which he had been ac- 
customed to read to his fair — and so he lulled himself 
to something near the warm mood of expectancy and 
began to tell himself that she was very late, that she 
had failed him on this their last day. There was a 
sort of sweet anguish in the disappointment which 
he liked so much that he was almost put out when 
she came. 


5 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He leaped to his feet and opened his arms and she 
sank into them, and an enchantment descended upon 
them and they kissed. 

He had prepared for her a couch of bracken. On 
this they lay and kissed again. This kiss was tragic. 
The enchantment broke in the middle, and he found 
the proximity of her face ridiculous and embarrassing 
and his position uncomfortable. He did not tell her 
so, and a simulated rapture hid his feelings from her. 
She sighed: 

“Oh, Rene!” 

The sound of his name on her lips never failed to 
move him, and a little of the enchantment returned. 
He could endure her nearness, and gave her an af- 
fectionate little hug quite genuinely warm. It sur- 
prised her into happy laughter. 

“Oh, Rene! it has been more beautiful this year 
even than last. Of course we’re older. Do you think 
it goes on for ever and ever, year after year, grow- 
ing more and more beautiful?” 

“Very few lovers ” began Rene in a solemn 

voice, but at once the generalization offended him 
and he never reached his predicate. The subject 
seemed entirely to satisfy Cathleen. She took his 
hand in hers : 

“We mustn’t stop writing to each other again.” 

“It was you who stopped.” 

“I thought ” 

“It made it very horrid meeting you again, very 
anxious, I mean — I mean I don’t know what your life 
is like.” 


6 


LOVE IN EARNEST 

“You know I shall never find anyone like you, Rene, 
never.” 

He thought with distaste of her brothers, robust, 
athletic young men, wonderfully tailored, with a 
knack of getting the last ounce of effect out of soap 
and water. Dirt avoided them; they could not be 
shabby or untidy, and they made him feel grubby and 
shrunken. Oxford and Cambridge they were, and 
they stared him into a sort of silly shame when he 
spoke of his university, Thrigsby, and yet, through 
his shame there would dart tremors of a fierce feel- 
ing of moral superiority. Anyhow, their sister loved 
him, and never “chipped” him as their young women 
“chipped” them. There was never any sign that their 
young women took them seriously. 

“I will write,” said Cathleen. “This year won’t 
seem so long. I couldn’t be certain, last year.” 

“Are you certain now?” 

“Oh, Rene!” 

This time the enchantment was full on them, raced 
through them, alarmed them. They moved a little 
apart. 

“Let’s talk sense,” said he. “I want to mtrry you.” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“They won’t let me, you know. I’ve got my own 
way to make. In three years you’ll be twenty-one. I 
shall probably have to stay in Thrigsby because I can 
make a living there, but I’ll get to London as soon as 
I can. You wouldn’t like Thrigsby.” 

“Anywhere with you.” 

“The people there aren’t your sort. My own peo- 

7 


YOUNG EARNEST 


pie won’t like my marrying so young. I’ve got rotten 
uncles and aunts backing me because they think I’m 
clever. I should have been in business long ago if 
it hadn’t been for them. My brother’s in a shipping 
office 

“What did your father do?” 

He shifted uneasily on that. The formula seemed 
empty and a little vulgar, somehow grimy, to present 
to her. He answered : 

“He drank whisky and smoked cigarettes.” 

“Oh! I’m sorry.” 

Almost imperceptibly she shrank away from him, 
but he saw it. 

“You may as well know. We’re no great shakes. 
My old Aunt Janet talks of the great people she has 
known, but my mother’s just a Thrigsby ‘widow’ liv- 
ing in a thirty-pound-a-year house in an ex-genteel 
part of the town. There are lots of women like her 
in Thrigsby. You live in one of those streets and 
nothing seems to happen. Then you hear that the 
lady at No. 53 isn’t married to her husband, or that 
Mr. Twemlow of 25 has run away from his wife 
and four children. We lived at 49 Axon Street when 
my father disappeared. We live at 166 Hog Lane 
West now. We’ve gone up in the world since my 
brother began to earn money.” 

He had talked himself into a gloom. The smoke 
of Thrigsby seemed to smirch the glade. 

“Poor old thing !” said Cathleen. “I don’t see that 
it matters much. You’re you, just the same. We 
live in a house called Roseneath. It’s in Putney, but 
8 


LOVE IN EARNEST 


we call it London. Father makes a lot of money, 
and is a recorder and all the rest of it, but we aren’t 
anything in particular. We turn up our noses at a lot 
of people, but there are lots more people who turn up 
their noses at us. You’d laugh if you could see how 
savage it makes Edith and Rachel sometimes when 
they grovel for invitations and don’t get them. And 
it was wonderful what a difference it made when 
Basil got his blue at Cambridge. All Putney ” 

She threw out her hands to indicate the extent of 
her brother’s triumph. Then, realizing how far their 
talk had taken them from the sweet employment which 
was their habit, she crept nearer. 

“If I thought all that nonsense was going to upset 
you, and hang about you while we’re waiting, I’d run 
away with you to-morrow.” 

“Oh, my darling!” cried he, overcome by this reck- 
lessness and proof of the seriousness of her inten- 
tions. They sat with hands clasped, gazing into each 
other’s eyes in a charmed happiness. 

“Forever and ever,” said Rene. 

“Forever and ever,” cried she. “It isn’t many peo- 
ple who find the real thing in the first.” 

He glowed. 

“Oh! we must never spoil it.” 

Then they lay side by side with the volume of love 
poems between them, and he read aloud their fa- 
vorites. 

They became very sorrowful as they realized that 
the last moments of their golden days were running 
out, and they held each other close in a long shy 

9 


YOUNG EARNEST 


embrace, and they kissed each other fearfully, and 
Cathleen could not keep back her tears. 

'You will write to me?” 

“Oh, yes, yes.” 

“Good-by, my dear, good-by.” 

So reluctantly, with dragging steps, they walked 
out of their glade and into the path leading to the 
great house. At the last turn they embraced again, 
and parted quickly on a sudden crackling in the woods. 
They saw nothing, but they walked on more swiftly, in 
a silence more full of fear than of love. 

At the garden gate they were met by Mr. Bentley, 
Cathleen’ s father. To Rene he loomed very large, and 
he felt a sickening internal disturbance as he saw 
that his presence was ignored. 

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Mr. 
Bentley. 

“I’ve been a walk.” 

“Your mother wants you.” 

“At once?” 

“She wanted you an hour ago.” 

Cathleen sped away. 

Disconcertingly Rene knew that her father’s whole 
attention was concentrated upon him, though the law- 
yer’s little cunning eyes were not looking at him. 
They both stood still, with the silence between them 
growing colder and colder. Rene hotly imagined him- 
self saying: 

“Sir, I love your daughter and she loves me. I am 
poor but able. I have won many prizes at school, and 
in the Faculty of Economics and Commercial Science 


io 


LOVE IN EARNEST 

in the University of Thrigsby. I am young, sir, 
but ” 

When at last he opened his lips he said: 

“We — we’ve been a walk.” 

“So I perceive.” 

“The woods are very beautiful at this time of year.” 

The silence froze. 

“Are you staying long?” This came at length in a 
snappy, cross-examining voice. 

“I go to-morrow.” 

Rene was overwhelmed with the grubby shrunk 
feeling. It seemed so easy for these people to mount 
the high horse of their social superiority. 

“Will you kindly tell your aunt that we are ex- 
pecting her to dinner the day after to-morrow?” 

With that Mr. Bentley rolled in at the garden gate 
(he was a fat little man) and closed it, though he 
knew that Rene’s way lay through the garden. 

Raging, the young man walked the necessitated ex- 
tra mile, infuriated and chilled by two questions : Had 
Cathleen removed the bracken from her hair? and 
Was that meeting by the gate accident or design ? 

That night he asked his Aunt Janet about his father. 
She dodged his inquiries, and he could get nothing 
from her but this : 

“I admire your mother more than I can say. She 
married a bad Fourmy, and that’s as bad as you can 
get. Poor, too. I was glad when that little money 
came to her.” 

He gave her Mr. Bentley’s message, and she said: 


ii 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“You mustn’t let their way of living go upsetting 
you. It’s just money. You’ve got to fill the gap be- 
tween you with more than that.” 

“With what?” 

“You’ll find that out.” 

Did she know of his love? Was- she warning him? 
Did she approve? Did she think him worthy? How 
could people survive love and become old and dull? 
All these and more questions buzzed about him as 
he lay in bed. He brushed them all aside with the 
cry, “Oh, but I love her!” And, being young and 
full of health, he was soon asleep, though a blank 
tossing night would have more pleased him and his 
mood. 


II 


1 66 HOG LANE WEST 

The homeward journey was by no means so agreeable. 

E VERY year since he had been a small boy, as the 
carriage rounded the crag which blots the lake 
out of sight, Rene had been moved to tears. Happi- 
ness and brightness were left behind, and every mo- 
ment brought him nearer to dullness and dark streets 
and uncomprehending minds. And now, as he rounded 
the crag, Cathleen appeared on the summit, just too 
late to meet him or to come within earshot. She was 
wearing a blue sunbonnet, and she snatched it from 
her head and waved it until he was out of sight. He 
turned and watched her and tears came, and he could 
hardly choke back his sobs, and hoped miserably that 
the driver of his fly was not aware of his unmanli- 
ness. 

In the train he tried to tell himself that he was 
taking back the brightness of his love to Thrigsby, 
but as he came nearer, more and more powerfully did 
it seem to reach out to crush his love. By the time 
he was out in the Albert Station, he had reached a de- 
pression not to be broken even by the excitement of 
seeing again the familiar sights, the trams, the black 
13 


YOUNG EARNEST 


river, the Collegiate Church, the dark warehouses, the 
school where he had spent so many dazed, busy, mon- 
otonous years, the statue of the Prince Consort, the 
yellow timber-yards by the canal, the brilliant green- 
grocer’s shop at the corner of Kite Street, the council 
school where he had begun his education, the dirty 
brick streets among which his whole youth had been 
spent. Only some horrid disaster could have relieved 
him. Even up to the moment when the door opened 
he hoped almost desperately to find some difference 
in his home. 

The erratic servant came to the door. She had a 
black smudge across her cheek, and her hair was 
tousled. She gave him no greeting. 

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and as she turned he saw 
that one of her shoes was split down the heel and 
had frayed her stocking into what was known in 
the family as a “potato.” 

He heaved his bag into the lobby and passed along 
to the dining-room, where he found his mother. She 
was, as he knew she would be, doing crochet-work. 
He kissed her. 

“How brown you are!” she said. 

“It’s been wonderful weather. Aunt Janet sent you 
some shortbread and some knitted things.” 

“I wish she wouldn’t. She can’t knit, and she’s for- 
gotten how old you are, and makes things as if you 
were still children. But she’s very good to us. I don’t 
know what I should have done without her.” 

“She said she admired you more than she can say.” 

“I’ve done my best for you.” 

14 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


“She said you married a bad Fourmy.” 

“I wish she hadn’t said that.” 

Rene responded to his mother’s embarrassment, but 
he could not spare her. 

“Is that true. Was my father a bad man?” 

“He was a gentleman. The Fourmys are proud, 
clever people. They think they are always right, and 
they want everything their own way. That is all very 
well if you have money. But, without it — But why 
talk of it? It’s all done.” 

“Did you love my father?” 

Mrs. Fourmy brought her hands down into her lap 
and stopped plying her needle. 

“What’s come to you, Rene?” 

He longed to tell his mother that he too loved, and 
could therefore understand, but his question had so 
disarmed her, her eyes looked so frightened, so ex- 
pectant of hurt, that he could not continue. 

“Oh,” he said, “it’s just queer, coming back. One 
can feel all sorts of things in the house, and ” 

“You are like your father in many ways.” And she 
resumed her crochet. 

That alarmed him. Like his father? He felt indig- 
nant and uncomfortably self-conscious. He contrasted 
his hitherto exemplary and successful career with 
those mean memories — lying abed, whisky and cig- 
arettes. He began to protest : 

“But he ” 

“He was always talking about feeling things the 
same as you. There was a lot of good in your father 
though his own people would never admit it, and mine 
15 


YOUNG EARNEST 


could never see it But it’s no good talking. It’s 

all done.” 

“He left you.” 

“A boy like you can’t judge a man.” 

“Oh, but I know.” 

“You can’t get anything for the like of that out of 
books. There’s some men can stay with a woman and 
some can’t, and which you’ll be you’ll know when you 
come to it.” 

Rene stared at his mother. She looked very small, 
sitting there by the empty fireplace. She seemed to be 
talking to him from a great distance away, from be- 
yond the Something which he had always felt to be in 
life. In the glade in Scotland he had thought to have 
surmounted it, but now, when he thought of it, that 
had already dwindled away and become as small and 
rounded as that memory of his father which had 
haunted him in his waiting. Cathleen seemed so 
remote that he was alarmed. The foundations of 
omnipotent everlasting love were undermined! Worst 
of all, he knew that it had become impossible to talk 
of her. Not even her image in his mind could dwell 
in that house. And his mother — his mother was say- 
ing horrible, worldly things in a thin, weary voice. In 
fierce rebellion his innocence rose up against her. It 
was impossible for him to admit a fall from grace. 
Either you loved or you did not. If you loved, it was 
forever. If you did not, then you were damned past 
all hope; at least you were, if you were a man. All 
women were Dulcineas to this Quixote . 

So moved was he, so distressed, that he lost the 
1 6 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


sequence of his thoughts, and they pursued their ca- 
reers in his head regardless of his comfort or imme- 
diate needs. He was left inarticulate. 

“You’ll catch all the flies in the house in your mouth 
if you don’t close it,” said his mother. 

He snapped his teeth together, and said fiercely : 

“All the same, if I treated a woman as my father 
treated you, I’d shoot myself.” 

“Absurd you are. A man needs a fair conceit of 
himself to do that. And can’t a woman learn to have 
a life of her own?” 

“Women •” began Rene, but his mother cut him 

short in a soothing voice that was almost a caress : 

“Keep that for the young ones, my dear. I’m too 
old to be told what women are and are not, or to care. 
Shall we have the shortbread for tea? George is to 
be in with Elsie.” 

“Who’s Elsie?” 

“Didn’t I tell you? George is going to be married.” 

“George is?” 

“Yes.” Mrs. Fourmy gave a chuckle that for so 
tiny a woman was surprisingly large. “Yes, George 
has been almost as good at falling in love as you.” 

That bowled Rene middle-stump, and he went out to 
bring in his bag and unpack the shortbread and the 
Shetland jacket he had bought in Inverness for his 
mother. 

She tried it on and preened herself in it. 

“Smart I am. You’re a kind boy to me. Do you 
remember how you two boys used to say when you 
were grown up you would be rich and take me to my 
17 


YOUNG EARNEST 


old home in Wiltshire ? George won’t, now he’s going 
to be married.” 

“But I will,” said Rene. “When I’ve saved money 
and can retire, we’ll go and live together.” 

“I don’t know. It’s easy to forget old women.” 

“Oh, come ! A man doesn’t forget his mother.” 

“Doesn’t he?” 

“And old? You’re not old.” 

“I’ve been old since before you were born.” 

Rene gazed down at his mother and marveled at her 
in painful astonishment. In her little quiet voice she 
was saying things that stabbed into him, or, hardly 
stabbing, abraded and bruised him. And suddenly he 
began almost to perceive that her life was not tranquil, 
not the smooth pale flowing he had imagined it to be. 
He stared down at her, and she raised her eyes so that 
they met his. He dared not even tremble, so fearful 
was he of betraying his divination and her eyes flashed 
a warning, and his mind seized triumphantly upon its 
first intellectual mastery of emotion, and he said to 
himself : 

“There are certain feelings and currents of sym- 
pathy which can only dwell in silence.” 

Then he laughed: 

“You must have been pretty when you were a 
girl.” 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Fourmy, taking up her crochet, 
“my hair was lovely.” 

With that she rose and busied herself with pre- 
paring tea, taking out the caddy in which the party 
brand was kept, and her best table-center and the orna- 
18 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


merits which were reserved for the few elegant oc- 
casions the household could admit. 

“I got a pair of sleeve-links for George,” said Rene. 
“Silver and agate. When’s he going to be married? 
They might do for a wedding present as well.” 

“They are going to be married at once. They’ve 
got to be.” 

“I say!” He spun round on that. “I say. Need 
you have told me? When she’s coming here and 
all !” 

But Mrs. Fourmy was remorseless. She said with 
biting coldness: 

“When George was a little boy, he found out when 
I was married and reckoned up from that to the day 
when he was born, and he let me know that he knew. 
He told you too.” 

“Yes. He told me. How did you know?” 

“You looked at me all one Sunday afternoon with 
your big eyes.” 

“Oh, mother!” 

“There they are. George has forgotten the key. 
Will you go to the door? Polly has chosen to-day to 
clean the kitchen out. She would. She isn’t fit to be 
seen.” 

Rene went to the door. 

“Hullo! old man!” — Rene hated to be called “old 
man” — “Hullo ! Got back ?” 

“Only just.” 

“This is Elsie — Elsie Sherman. Mother’s told 
you ?” 

Elsie was pretty, as tall as Rene, and just a shade 

19 


YOUNG EARNEST 


taller than George. She took the hand Rene held out, 
and squeezed it warmly. 

“So you’re the wonderful brother?” 

“Yes. The Yes, I’m George’s brother. You 

— you can take your things off in mother’s room if 
you like.” 

“Or mine,” said George. 

“Don’t be silly. I couldn’t,” said Elsie, with a gig- 
gle that made Rene hate her. She ran upstairs and 
George patted his brother on the shoulder. 

“Well? Still good enough for us? What do you 
think of her?” 

“She’s pretty.” 

“When you know her a bit you’ll want to go and do 
likewise, my son.” 

Standing there huddled with his brother in the nar- 
row lobby that seemed all coats and umbrellas, Rene 
remembered with a horrible vividness his brother com- 
ing to his bed and telling him how his father and 
mother were married on such a day and how, five 
months later, he, George, was born. And he remem- 
bered how he burst into tears, and when George 
asked him what he was howling for, he had said: 
“They didn’t want you,” a view of the matter to which 
George had remained insensible. He saw now that 
the revelation had broken the young intimacy that 
had always been between them. He said: 

“Mother’s got out her best center for you.” 

“Good old mother!” replied George. Then he 
raised his voice and bawled : 

“Elsie!” 


20 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


“Coming!” 

She came running downstairs. George caught and 
kissed her, and as they went along the passage Rene 
wondered how it could be possible for one extra per- 
son to make the house seem overfull. 

It was certainly a party. Mrs. Fourmy set the note, 
a ceremonious expansiveness in opening up the family 
to its new member. Rene’s achievements were 
paraded, and the letter written by his headmaster, 
which had finally decided the family that he was too 
good for commerce, was produced and read aloud. 
George’s virtues as a son were extolled and punctu- 
ated with his protest: 

“I say, mother, draw it mild.” 

And Elsie’s rather too fervent: 

“Of course I know I’m very lucky.” 

They played bridge and Rene lost fourpence, be- 
cause he played with his mother, who never could re- 
member to suit her declarations to her score, or to 
return her partner’s lead, and had no other notion of 
play than to make her aces while she could. 

Elsie talked of her family, especially of a rich 
uncle she had who kept a timber yard and of a cousin 
who was a Wesleyan minister. Of her own immedi- 
ate relations she spoke affectionately but little. Alto- 
gether she was so anxious to please that Rene forgot 
his first distasteful impression and set himself to make 
her laugh. She was grateful to him for that. The 
evening would not have been a success for her with- 
out abundant laughter, and George’s jokes were just 
a little heavy. Also she seemed to be slightly afraid 


21 


YOUNG EARNEST 


of him, as though in all her responses to him were a 
small risk, rather more, at any rate, than she could 
always venture to take. She warmed to Rene, there- 
fore, and between them they kept things lively. 

In a silence while George was dealing — for he took 
his bridge very seriously — Rene hummed a bar or 
two of a piece called Blumenlied, which he had 
been taught to play as a boy when he worked off the 
set of music lessons George had begun and relin- 
quished. 

“Oh, Blumenlied !” cried Elsie; “I adore that,” and 
she took up the air. 

“You’ve got a pretty voice,” said Rene. 

“Have I ? I do sing sometimes.” 

“Sings?” said George. “I should think so. The 
family’s a concert party. Everything from the human 
voice to a piccolo.” 

They finished the rubber and adjourned to the par- 
lor, where Mrs. Fourmy drew sweet buzzing notes 
from the little old piano that seemed to have come into 
the world at the same time as herself and to have 
shared her experience. She knew all its tricks and 
could dodge its defects, and when she played faded 
songs that had had their day, and Elsie sang them, 
Rene was melted into a mood of loving kindness and 
was full of gratitude to the two women, and wished 
only for their happiness — an eternity of such happi- 
ness as they were giving him now. 

He kissed Elsie when she said good-by. She lived 
only a few streets away, and George asked him to sit 
up for him. When the couple were gone : 


22 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


“Well?” said Mrs. Fourmy, more to the fireplace 
than to her son. 

“She’s too good for George.” Rene thought with 
dislike of his brother, sitting with his eyes half-closed, 
taking a too voluptuous delight in the music and show- 
ing a too proprietary pride in the singer. 

“She suits him,” rejoined his mother. “George 
wants to settle down. So does she. Most people are 
like that. They settle down, and they think nothing 
else can happen to them. You’re not like that.” 

“I don’t know. To settle down ” 

“Love songs. You think it’s all love songs. They 
think it’s all love songs, or they try to. Warm and 
comfortable. Oh, but I’ve seen it too often.” 

“Why do you keep hinting at things, mother?” 

“I wasn’t hinting. I know, and you will know, and 
they never will. I could have screamed sometimes to- 
night.” 

“I thought you liked her.” 

“Like? Oh, Rene, boy, if only you’d grow up and 
be some use to me!” 

“I want to be.” 

“I know that, and it’s something.” 

“Are you hurt because they •?” 

“I’ve been a foolish woman. I’ve been seeing more 
hope for George than there ever was.” 

She took up the box of matches from the chimney- 
piece and stood fingering it. He hoped she would say 
more, but nothing came. The disconcerting sense of 
the otherness of his mother’s world played about him, 
and he felt helpless and rather fatuous. 

23 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Bed’s the best place for me,” she said. “You don’t 
know how I’ve been dreading this evening. And it’s 
gone off very well, very well. Good night, my dear. 
I’m glad you came home to-day.” 

She astonished him by kissing him on both cheeks, 
for ordinarily she held up her face and he stooped and 
pecked at it. To-night there was a kind of suspension 
of the habits of the household. 

He heard her go upstairs, and with surprising celer- 
ity get into bed. Then he sat alone waiting in the 
dim, jaded dining-room, with the enormous table de- 
signed for a hospitality which was never given, and 
the corner cupboard which had been in all the houses 
the family had inhabited, and the hanging smoker’s 
cabinet over the mantelpiece which was used as a med- 
icine chest, and the absurd knick-knacks his father had 
collected, and the plaques his father had painted with 
apples and cherry-blossom and bulrushes. There was 
so much in the room that spoke of his father. The 
whisky and the boxes of cigarettes used to be kept in 
the corner cupboard. On the table he had helped his 
father to make the screen out of old Christmas num- 
bers and colored plates of the Graphic and Illustrated 
London News , which had given him employment dur- 
ing the whole of one winter. And he was stirred by 
the memory of the emotions that must have been 
behind his mother’s strange incoherence, and he told 
himself that she had suffered, and that his father was 
to blame for it all and could meet with no fate too 
harsh. 

George returned, whistling. 

24 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. 

“Anything you like,” replied Rene. 

“You won’t mind my putting it bluntly?” 

“No.” 

“Well, you see how it is. I’ve got a rise, but Elsie 
hasn’t a stiver, and we shall only have enough to pull 
through on. My money goes out of this house. 
You’ve had a soft time up to now; you can’t go on. 
If you want to stay in the house you’ll have to buckle 
to and earn some money, or move to another, or lodg- 
ings; but even in the cheapest lodgings it would be 
a squeeze with mother’s little bit.” 

“I see. But I’ve got another year.” 

“Can’t you teach someone something? You’ve been 
learning long enough.” 

“I might. I see I must do something. When are 
you going to be married?” 

“Next month. What are you staring at?” 

“Was I staring?” 

“When you were a kid I used to hit you for staring 
at me like that, and, by God, I’d like to do it now. 
Elsie said, she said: ‘Your brother’s got all his feel- 
ings just under his skin.’ Why don’t you say some- 
thing?” 

George rose, went to the corner cupboard and took 
out a bottle of whisky. The gesture, the lift of the 
shoulder, the cock of the back of the head, reminded 
Rene irresistibly of his father. George turned. 

“Why can’t you stop staring? I’m going to be mar- 
ried. I’m no different. There’s nothing very startling 
in that, is there?” 


25 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“The whole thing seems to me so ” 

He stopped, staring more wildly. The word he sup- 
pressed was greedy , and it was most painfully ex- 
planatory. 

“So what?” 

“I mean — I liked her. She seems a good sort.” 

“No nonsense about Elsie.” 

“Doesn’t it make you understand mother more?” 

“Mother? She’s a queer little devil. Didn’t speak 
to me for a fortnight after I told her, and she took to 
going to church again. She’s a rum ’un, is mother. I 
believe she’d do anything if it wasn’t she’s so darned 
fond of you.” 

“Oh, you think it’s me?” 

“If it wasn’t for you she’d have chucked the whole 
thing long ago and gone right off into a convent or 
something. She doesn't like the money part of it 
being put off on to you. Really, I don’t think she 
minded anything else. She knows what life is, mother 
does.” 

“How will you live?” 

“Oh, a snug little house. Her father’ll give us fur- 
niture. He’s an old sport, he is. Keeps the Den- 
mark, you know, in Upper Kite Street. ’Normous 
family. Delighted when the girls go off. Elsie 
worked in a shop. No more work for Elsie.” 

“You’re pleased with yourself, then?” 

“I’m going to be married; that’s good enough for 
any man. Married and settled down. That’s life.” 

“Is it?” Rene found George entirely absurd, and 
he laughed. 


26 


166 HOG LANE WEST 


“Oh, well,” he added, “mother and I will find a way. 
Good night” 

“Good night,” replied George. “Go and dream of 
your books and your swells. My ElsieTl beat all their 
women. I know those swell ladies. Good night.” 

Upstairs, in his little room, Rene took pen, ink, and 
paper, and wrote to Cathleen: 

“This house is exactly like thirty-one other houses. 
Parlor, kitchen, dining-room, three bedrooms above 
them. That’s all. And they are all full of grubby lit- 
tle lives and the material things they don’t express 
themselves in. Do you see what I mean? Coming 
straight from you, from our woods, from the tall 
bracken and the heather, I feel trapped. What I miss, 
I think, is graciousness. Oh, yes ! That is the word. 
All the charming ways you have. The easy courtesies 
with which you smooth over any roughnesses, any lack 
of sympathy, so that, even among uncongenial peo- 
ple, silence is not devastating. And between you and 
me silence can be so beautiful, so full of something 
more melodious than sound. But here, if there is 
silence, little uglinesses creep out of dark corners and 
fill it. They do not seem to know the difference be- 
tween silence and emptiness. My mother has al- 
most frightened me. I can’t tell you. Something 
terrible and yet silly has happened. I don’t under- 
stand. Some things hurt my feelings so that I can 
never understand them. But my mother was won- 
derful all the same, and different, so different that 
I was not at all surprised at her. I suppose I knew it 
27 


YOUNG EARNEST 


all along. She has suffered as women must not, must 
not, must not suffer, as I will never let you suffer. I 
cannot write love words to you. I can only tell you 
that I am building up my life toward you. I have 
changed. It all seems enormously serious suddenly. 
A lot that we have had seems silly. I want to ex- 
plain to you. It is terrible that I can’t see you again 
for a whole year, terrible, terrible. But I love you. 
I have begun to see what love is, what a man can 
be to a woman if he does not drag her down to his 
own level. Lovers, I think, should have something 
wonderful, something that should illuminate every- 
thing so that even the darkest places and happenings 
are bearable. Oh, you see what I mean. I am trying 
to bring it all, what I feel, to you. You must under- 
stand. This year is different from last, more serious, 
more beautiful. Think what it will be when we are 
ready to be together. When I think of it I am almost 
afraid. No one is ever ready for that, so holy is love. 
Holy! Holy! Holy! A little boy’s voice in a church 
singing that expresses it as nothing else can. I have 
to begin to earn my living.” 

He had got so far with his pen racing along in the 
wake of his thoughts when his mother knocked at his 
door : 

“Do go to bed, Rene, dear. You’re not working 
already?” 

“No, mother. I wasn’t working.” 

“Then you mustn’t stay up, wasting the gas and 
all.” 


Ill 


GEORGE MARRIED 

’Tis an evil lot, and yet 
Let us make the best of it; 

If love can live when pleasure dies 
We two will love, till in our eyes 
This heart’s Hell seem paradise. 

G EORGE married and settled in the newly de- 
veloped region behind Hog Lane West. Before 
he went, he spent a whole evening with his mother 
and brother making a list of his possessions, and ar- 
guing with them when they claimed a chair or a piece 
of china he had bought as family property. They had 
been purchased with his money, and they had only en- 
joyed a right of user. — (His firm had been through 
protracted litigation in the Chancery Courts, and he 
was up in legal phrases.) — They must have known 
that sooner or later he would have a house of his 
own. The procuring of a wife seemed to have ag- 
gravated George’s acquisitive sense. He was exceed- 
ingly conscious of the extension of his personality 
and was groping round for material things wherewith 
to fortify it. More and more he treated his brother 
with condescension, and was continually hinting at the 
29 


YOUNG EARNEST 


things marriage did for a man. He had not been so 
grossly jubilant since his first encounter with woman, 
whereof he had given Rene a full and rapturous ac- 
count. Rene had been more able to understand that 
excitement than this. To George the two adventures 
were apparently of the same order ; to Rene they were 
profoundly different, and his brother’s boisterousness 
induced misery in him. What his mother made of it 
all, he could not discover. All day long, and often 
late at night she was crocheting at a bed-quilt which 
she was anxious to have finished against the wedding. 
The savage communicativeness which had so disturbed 
Rene on the night of his home-coming was succeeded 
by silence and silly chatter, and she was constantly 
and mysteriously busy at George’s house or with El- 
sie at the shops. 

Cathleen Bentley had written : 

“How can you have such a brother? But he is 
great fun. Tell me more. And I adore your mother. 
If only we could be engaged, I would come and stay 
with you.” 

Rene described: 

“George keeps hinting at Things in marriage. He 
is rather like a man dreaming of good food, a series 
of meals magically prepared and set before him so that 
he does not need to rise. One meal is cleared away 
and another appears. I find it hard to grasp. I im- 
agine his life otherwise must be dull, though he never 
seems to mind that. He is what you call Steady ; has 
been in the same office since he was sixteen, and will 
go on in it until he is sixty and past work. Perhaps 
30 


GEORGE MARRIED 


all his desire and hope go into this adventure. Per- 
haps he feels that nothing lies beyond it, and is there- 
fore cramming everything into it. Certainly he is not 
allowing himself room to develop anything out of 
it. There’s a sort of desperation in him. Now or 
never. After all, I suppose he’s getting what he 
wants, but there is a heat in it which blisters me. That 
must be because I have known a cool, sweet love 
with you. How did it happen? You must try to 
understand, look down into the lives of people on a 
lower level than your own. We have no organized 
pleasures, at least not enough of them, and we are 
really thrown back on the man and maiden business, 
casual for the most part. We feel the grubbiness of 
it, but they don’t. It’s fire and warmth to them. 
Primitive, isn’t it? Like savages rubbing two sticks 
together. It doesn’t leave much room for affection or 
charm. It has to be raw or they can’t believe in it, in- 
articulate as they are, and as I am too often. We can’t 
make material existence a starting-point as you more 
favored ones can do if you choose. Love simply 
doesn’t have a chance with us. I think you could 
bring a wonderful happiness into my mother’s life. I 
keep wanting to tell her about you, and one of these 
days I shall. Will you send her some flowers from 
your garden? We have a backyard only with five 
privet bushes growing round an old bicycle shed. . . .” 

Writing to Cathleen was his safety-valve. He could 
find George amusing when he had written to her, and 
when he had a letter from her he could almost sa- 
lute his brother as a fellow-lover. 


3i 


YOUNG EARNEST 

The wedding was a noble piece of work. It was at 
St. Clement’s in Upper Kite Street, not a hundred 
yards away from the Denmark, where there was a 
rousing breakfast to which Mr. Sherman had invited 
his cronies and patrons. There were ponderous jokes 
about perambulators, and George, in an excited little 
speech, said that when he had a house large enough 
to accommodate all his family, he would be able to 
invite those friends who had come to see him and 
his Elsie married. Two or three old women wept; 
rice, confetti, and slippers were thrown after the 
happy pair as they drove off for their honeymoon, and 
in the afternoon the party went by train to Cheadley 
Edge and visited the caves, and wandered in the 
woods, and ate an enormous high tea at Yarker’s, the 
farmhouse which devoted one of its meadows to co- 
coanut-shies and roundabouts, and its garden to tea- 
parties. It was all good, vulgar, noisy fun, and Rene 
was caught in a series of flirtations with Elsie’s sisters 
and their friends. He kept finding their hands in his 
as they swung or walked or sat at tea, and they seemed 
to enter into a competition to be isolated with him 
in the woods or the caves, but not one of them es- 
tablished an exclusive right to him for the day, and 
by the return in the evening the party was split up into 
couples and he found himself thrown with his mother, 
who had throughout shown a stiff front to pleasantries 
and was exhausted by jollifications which for her had 
not been jolly. 

Sitting by her side in the tram as they drove from 
the station, Rene found himself dreading the return to 
32 


GEORGE MARRIED 


Hog Lane West. George had been an alien, but a 
convenient buffer between them. Now they had to 
establish a new order of living. George’s absence was 
an actuality with which they had to deal more vigor- 
ously than with his presence. They left his room 
empty. Neither had any use for it. The dining-room 
had been the living-room of the family. Without 
George, Rene and his mother found themselves re- 
lapsing into oppressive silences, and very soon he took 
to leaving her in the evenings, and going up to his 
bedroom and his books and his work. 

He was singularly friendless. His schoolmates had 
gone into offices and regarded with strange and rather 
alarmed eyes his continued pursuit of academic 
courses, and in his first years at the university he had 
undergone a violent spasm of mental growth which 
had left him shy and diffident, resentful of anything 
that seemed like intrusion upon his brooding, and im- 
patient of surface relationships and the too easy 
friendliness which he saw current on all sides. Also 
he was chafed by his position of semi-dependence upon 
his relations, and rather scared by the possibility of 
not doing well enough in his examinations to justify 
what was constantly being impressed upon him as his 
exceptional opportunity. Therefore he worked on a 
time-table in term and out of it, never less than nine 
hours a day; morning, afternoon, and evening; and 
rather harder in vacation than in term. He had no 
smallest notion what it was all for. He had an un- 
usual faculty for learning things and arrangements 
of ideas, and could always answer examination ques- 

33 


YOUNG EARNEST 


tions lucidly, and had so small a conceit of himself 
that his work was never spoiled by a nervous anxiety 
to excel nor interfered with by the emotionalism of 
the clever young. He had a sound, all-round ability, 
never expected anything to be difficult, and could 
quickly master the elements of any study he took up. 
When that study led away from practical considera- 
tions he was apt to lose interest in it. He had stopped 
short of philosophy and pure mathematics, and the 
astuteness of his headmaster had led him in his last 
year at school to specialize in history and economics. 
When he was sent up for a scholarship at Cambridge, 
he failed because the beauty of the Backs had so 
stirred his rather sluggish emotions as to cause him 
temporarily to lose his lucidity and shrewdness in 
dealing with examination questions, so that he wrote 
rather at large — thoroughly enjoying himself — than 
with particular reference to the matter in hand. How- 
ever, he had already won a County Council Scholar- 
ship, and with this he entered Thrigsby University. 
There he had done well and had picked up exhibi- 
tions and bursaries, striving for success not so much 
because he wanted it, as because it was expected of 
him. 

He lived now in a strange disquietude, reading his 
set books, Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Marshall, 
Cannan, Jevons, various works by Sidney and Beatrice 
Webb, amusing himself with the advanced diagram- 
matic economists, and grinding away at his special 
subject, Cooperation, from the Rochdale pioneers to 
the European “movement.” All this he did mechani- 

34 


GEORGE MARRIED 


cally. His brain had been set going in a certain di- 
rection by amiable instructors whom he had never seen 
any reason to doubt, and it was pleasant to let it go 
on so moving toward that examination which was to 
be a gate leading to a profession higher than the life 
of commerce from which he had been reclaimed. 

So far, so good; but George’s marriage had caused 
a stir-about in him. In the first place, it posed a do- 
mestic problem in economics that could not be solved 
on paper, and in the second it had roused him to moral 
revolt. He could not forget his affection for George. 
They had been great companions as little boys. He 
himself was in love, knew that love was sweet, and 
could not away with the fact that George’s marriage 
was to some extent a denial of all he had learned and 
gained in his own hours of tenderness. He hated to 
resist the idea that George was perfectly happy, but 
he could not help himself. His was no literary en- 
thusiasm for romance and noble love. He had read 
very few romances, and of poetry he knew no more 
than the anthology to which Cathleen had introduced 
him. On the whole, he preferred comfort above all 
things, and George made him uncomfortable, set stir- 
ring in him an idealism, a fervor, which so swelled in 
him as to make him, even in his outpourings to his 
beloved, incapable of stringing his ideas together. 
Literary persons can gain a great deal of relief by 
the mere reiteration of the words “I love you,” with 
variations. Words were to Rene only implements, 
painfully inadequate, for digging out the fineness 
which he had begun to perceive behind his feelings. 

35 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He could not forgive George for being content with 
mere feelings undisciplined and unrefined. He hoped 
innocently that the honeymoon would bring some reve- 
lation, but when bride and bridegroom returned they 
were more distressing than ever. They had lost their 
shyness. That was all. George was fatly, compla- 
cently “settled down,” and could never leave his wife 
alone for half an hour on end, but must be always 
touching her, teasing her, or openly caressing her, and 
she seemed to like it and to make a parade of his at- 
tentions. 

Rene would come away boiling from an evening 
spent at their house, which they had called The Nest, 
and he would sit, either cooling himself with his large 
books, or heightening his fury with letters to Cath- 
leen, now returned to Putney, which is called London. 
He never revised what he wrote. He had rather for- 
gotten the charm of his boyish love-making, and had 
lost the young trick of visualizing his fair, needing 
more from her than her beauty, and now used her as 
an outlet, assuming in her a sympathy which neither 
her past conduct nor her letters revealed. The mere 
fact of writing was enough, and his letters became in- 
timate and self -revelatory, a kind of running, general 
confession. Sometimes they were of enormous length, 
and the envelopes he sent away were bulky and bulg- 
ing. 

One night he stopped in the middle of a letter, 
turned back and read, realizing that he had laid bare 
the whole of his brother’s sexual life so far as he knew 
it. He was filled with a thick horror, tore the letter 
36 


GEORGE MARRIED 


up, and went down to his mother to escape from the 
train of thought which had led to such indiscretion 
and betrayal. He did not escape, but found himself 
plunged in confession: 

“Mother, I’m in love. ,, 

“Well, I never! You’re not going to be married 
now ?” 

“No. It’s hopeless. She’s rich. At least her father 
is.” 

“So that’s why you look so queerly at Elsie. You 
can’t expect them to be all alike.” 

“It isn’t only that. Only I can’t get away from 
certain things.” 

“What things?” 

“The horrible things people do.” 

“You’ll be kept busy if you worry about that.” 

“It’s about myself.” 

“Want to confess? Go on.” 

“I mean, George and I used to talk — you know. 
Well, it got beyond talk. Uncle Alfred gave tne ten 
shillings once. I spent it — that way.” 

“Well, well.” 

“You can’t dismiss it like that. I shouldn’t be re- 
membering it if it were so easy as that. I met her — 
you know — 'in Derby Street ” 

“You’re not going to tell me the whole story?” 

“I must tell someone. I met her and she took me 
down a lot of streets. She walked along briskly in a 
business-like way, and I slunk along behind with my 
coat collar turned up and my cap over my eyes, and I 
kept shivering, though it wasn’t cold. We came to a 

37 


YOUNG EARNEST 


little bouse and she knocked at the door, and a fat 
woman with red arms came to it. She just looked at 
us and said: ‘Full up/ We went on to another little 
house, but I couldn’t get that out of my mind, and the 
room there was so horrible that I ran away, and that’s 
all.” 

Mrs. Fourmy looked up at the clock, into the fire, 
round at the corner cupboard. At last she said : 

“Well, you are a funny boy.” 

“I’m in love all right,” he said; “but I feel as if 
I’d never like to marry and just go on with you for- 
ever and ever. I could find a sort of happiness in just 
making enough for us to live on.” 

His mother came over to him and laid her hands on 
his shoulders : 

“Don’t make trouble for yourself, my dear. Don’t 
do that. Let things alone. Trouble comes fast 
enough, and all your plans and thoughts and hopes 
aren’t enough to deal with them. That’s your father 
all over. Always wanting a little better than he got, 
and always getting a little worse than he deserved. 
Suppose we go out together once a week. That’ll stop 
us getting into the way of sitting too much alone. 
And if the girl’s the right sort of girl she won’t let 
being rich and all that stand in her way.” 

Rene patted her hand. 

“It’s awfully good of you to listen,” he said; “I 
feel better already. Only George ” 

“Don’t let George worry you. He can do things 
you can’t. George can keep his mind out of things 
like that.” 


38 


GEORGE MARRIED 


He felt immensely relieved. His confession seemed 
to have filled the vacancy left by George. Between 
himself and his mother there was established a more 
living relationship. There had been some authority 
in her comfortable words which had led him back to 
the old unconsidered position in which she was the 
central warmth of the home in which he lived. For 
a time at least he could be at rest and accept that things 
were so because they were so and not otherwise. 

Gradually they won back to happy insignificant 
chatter, and planned that on the following evening 
they would go to a music-hall together. 

The postman broke in upon their talk. He brought 
two letters for Rene. One was from Cathleen, and 
very short: 

“There’s been a row. I’ve been howling all night. I can’t 
write any more. They can’t understand. Vulgar they call 
you, and they are furious with me. They read one of your 
letters, opened it if you please. Not fit for a young girl. 
I’m not to have a heart till I can captivate a rich man old 
or young, and I am never to have a mind. It’s just beastly 
the things they say, but I can do nothing.” 

The other letter was from her mother: 

“Dear Sir, — I have read your last letter to my daughter. 
It is not fit reading for a young girl, or indeed for any pure 
woman. You will oblige me by not writing again, and I 
have forbidden my daughter to continue your acquain- 
tance.” 

He passed both letters over to his mother. 

“I told you it was hopeless.” 

39 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“If you ask my opinion/’ replied his mother, “I 
should say you were well rid of her.” 

“But I can’t help loving her.” 

Mrs. Fourmy sniffed indignantly : 

“Love! Well, you can call it love if you like.” 

“I do,” said he very earnestly. 

On which his mother staggered him by saying: 

“George wouldn’t.” 

In spite of himself, and against the grain, Rene be- 
gan to think a little enviously of his brother, master 
unperplexed of his own and another life. 


IV 


A RETURN 

Why, among us a drowning man has to make for himself 
the very straw he’s to clutch at ! 

B OTH Rene and his mother were excited all day 
over their projected visit to a music-hall. 
Thrigsby had ten of these places of amusement, and 
they found it hard to decide which to patronize. Only 
one was outside the possibility of choice, because it 
had performing seals in the bill, and Mrs. Fourmy 
could not bear to see animals on the stage. Rene was 
for the low comedians, his mother for music; and at 
last, in the program of one of the suburban halls, she 
found a musical turn which had once given her im- 
mense pleasure. She talked of it all afternoon, adding 
all the time so generously to its wonder that Rene be- 
gan to fear she would be disappointed with the actual- 
ity. But her anticipation was so firm as to overbear 
any shortcomings in the performance, and she saw and 
heard only what she expected to see and hear. For 
Rene there was a very droll comedian who made him 
shout with laughter. Mrs. Fourmy was shocked at a 
joke at the expense of the Deity and those who go to 
heaven, but she was so delighted with her son’s pleas- 
4i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


ure that she swallowed her distaste and laughed too. 
All the way home they recapitulated their moments 
of delight, and laughed and melted in remembrance. 

It was a lovely evening, and they walked through a 
residential park, the roads of which were private and 
flanked and overhung with trees. Lovers lurked in the 
shadows, and their sweet murmuring could be heard. 
Mrs. Fourmy took her son’s arm : 

“You and an old woman like me.” 

“Won’t it be lovely when we live in the country, 
mother ?” 

“Oh, but there won’t be any music-halls.” 

“We won’t need them in the country with the 
nights. You should have seen them in Scotland. I 
used to go into the woods, and sometimes up the hills.” 

“But with an old, old woman ” 

“I won’t let you be really old, mother. And up 
there I used to feel that I didn’t really want anybody. 
That’s queer, because I was in love — really, I was.” 

He began to tingle and burn at the thought of Cath- 
leen and the absurd end of his hopes, and almost tear- 
fully to realize that he was not yet out of love. That 
discomfort gave him a sense of gladness in his 
mother’s company. It was wonderful the sweetness 
that had come into their life together, the peace of it 
and the hope. 

He said: 

“It won’t be long before I can begin to make some 
money. I’m only waiting for Professor Smallman 
to come back. His letter was awfully kind. He says 
there will be no difficulty. I can get first-year pupils, 
42 


A RETURN 


and he can help me to find some journalistic work. 
Then when I’ve got my degree I’ll get a post, and you 
won’t have to take any more money from the rich 
Fourmys.” 

“It’s only what helps you now. You don’t seem to 
be a bit ambitious, Rene.” 

“Would you like me to be?” 

“But you’re so clever and everybody else is so 
stupid. It seems so funny of you to be so pleased 
with anything you can get.” 

“Funny?” He could hardly grasp what she meant. 
She went on: 

“You’re so good-looking, too. I shouldn’t be sur- 
prised if you got on and married somebody who was 
— well, you know.” 

There was a strain of bitterness in his mother which 
could infuriate him. To-night he was so happy with 
her that it made him only sad, and he said gently : 

“I don’t think I’m the sort that gets on. I say 
things — in letters, you know.” 

“But I’d like to see you well off and married to some 
really nice girl.” 

“And I’d like to see the girl who could make me 
give up the idea of living in the country with you.” 

“I’ll come and stay with you.” 

So they went on gently sparring, both clinging to 
their separate idylls of the future. They came out 
of the park into the streets of little shops and small 
houses like their own, and stopped presently at the 
German delicatessen store, where they argued as to 
what they should have for supper, ham or liver sau- 

43 


YOUNG EARNEST 


sage. They compromised, and decided on both, with 
little Swiss cheeses and honey-cakes. 

As they came out into Hog Lane West they were 
accosted by a man who asked Rene if he could tell him 
where Hog Lane West was, and which way he should 
turn to find 166. 

“That’s my house,” said Rene. 

The stranger moved closer to him and had a long 
look at him. Rene felt a tug at his arm, and turned 
to find his mother trembling against him. 

“Rene! Rene! it’s your father!” 

“Is it you, Essie?” said the stranger, and he re- 
moved his hat. 

“You — you I’m afraid,” said Rene chokingly, 

“I’m afraid you’ll find the door shut against you. 
I’ve — I’ve often thought what I should do if I set 
eyes on you again. That’s what I shall do. I can’t let 
you come.” 

“Essie,” the stranger turned to Mrs. Fourmy, “I’m 
dead broke.” 

“You must come and tell us, but you mustn’t stay. 
We’ve been out, Rene and I. We’ve got supper.” 

Her voice thinned away. She could speak no more. 
Her hand pressed Rene to move on, and they set out 
toward their house with the man following. Rene held 
the garden gate open, and stayed for a moment fum- 
bling for his key. When he found it, his father and 
mother were standing silhouetted against the glass 
panel of the door. He let them in, and, obeying an 
obscure instinct that stirred in him, went upstairs to 
leave them alone together. Not for long. He found 

44 


A RETURN 


that in his confusion he had taken the viands with 
him. He gained a few moments in the kitchen pre- 
paring a tray (Polly was out for the evening and 
not yet returned), and then, with the dishes clatter- 
ing as he walked, he rejoined them in the dining-room. 

He had not consciously expected anything, but as 
he entered the dining-room he saw his father with his 
back turned to him at the corner cupboard with his 
hand on the key, his head cocked, his shoulders up, 
very like George, and it was as though he had fore- 
seen it. It was uncanny and his heart ached in a sort 
of dread. 

His mother’s face was shining with a glowing ex- 
citement, and she looked away from him as she said : 

“Your father wants us to let him stay for a little. 
There’s George’s room, you know, and I want him to.” 

Rene felt helpless. The emergency was too strong 
for him. 

“All right,” he said. 

His father turned and smiled pleasantly. 

“That’s good of you — very good of you. I’d be in 

the cart without. I’m — well — I’ve been But we’ll 

talk of that later.” 

“Talk!” murmured Rene, aghast. “Who would 
talk? Who could find anything to say?” Miserably 
he laid out the plates round the big hospitable table, 
so big, so hospitable, that it was out of place and for- 
bidding. 

Mr. Fourmy had already helped himself to whisky. 
(George always kept a bottle in the house in case he 
and Elsie should drop in of an evening.) They drew 

45 


YOUNG EARNEST 


up to the table and went through a mockery of eat- 
ing. The bread was bitter in Rene’s mouth, and the 
dainties they had bought were tasteless. Mrs. Fourmy 
talked in a toneless twittering voice of the music-hall 
performance, while Rene stole glances at his father 
and avoided meeting his eyes. If he met his eyes he 
felt, in spite of himself, amused, charmed, tickled, 
somehow pleased, and with that pleasure was mixed a 
salt savor of pity, so that it was irresistible and led 
on wonderfully to a sure promise of adventure. Rene 
kept muttering to himself : ‘'He’s a bad man. A bad 
Fourmy, and you can’t do worse than that.” This 
memory he flung with a look at his mother, only to 
realize as he looked that she had no thought for him, 
but, like him, was stealing glances at his father and 
avoiding meeting the little keen humorous eyes. And 
his father went on eating hungrily and heartily. Half 
a loaf of bread he ate, and two-thirds of the ham and 
all the liver sausage. Then he looked wistfully at 
the honey-cakes, but desisted, produced a packet of 
cigarettes, and began to smoke. 

“That’s good,” he said. “My first square meal since 
this morning. That’s good, good.” 

He moved from the table into the big red velvet 
chair by the fire. 

“Good, very good. And it’s a real home-coming. 
After all, this isn’t so very different from the old 
house.” 

“It’s bigger,” said Rene. 

His father turned and scanned him. 

“I can hardly realize you yet, young man. Can’t 
46 


A RETURN 


allow for your growing up. Can only just trace the 
face I remember. Your nose has grown.” 

“You used to have a mustache.” 

“Yes. Shaved it off in America. Didn’t like Roose- 
velt.” 

“Have you been to America?” 

“Been the devil’s own dance, up and down America, 
North and South, Philippines, Malay Settlement — - 
that’s Rangoon — China, back to America. Wonder- 
ful how you meet Thrigsby folk all over the world. 
Hundreds of young men everywhere who seem to have 
been at school with you and George. I’ve had enough. 
Want to settle down.” 

“Like George.” 

“Isn’t George coming in?” 

“He’s married.” 

“The devil he is ! And am I a grandfather ? Lord! 
what a world it is for breeding! Think of me just 
fifty and a grandfather. What things do happen to a 
man, to be sure.” 

“If only you wouldn’t talk,” protested Rene in a 
sudden exasperation. 

“To be sure,” returned his father genially. “I’m the 
prodigal. Must give you time to take me in while we 
digest the fatted calf.” 

“It’s not that !” Rene was swept by his indignation 
on to his feet. “It isn’t that! Only I never thought 
of this. You come in, and you sit there in your old 
chair as though you’d only gone out yesterday. And 
it’s over ten years, and I can hardly remember you, 
and I know all the time that you’re my father, and 

47 


YOUNG EARNEST 


— and — I don’t know you. It’s simply beastly. I don’t 
know why it is, but it is.” 

“Rene! Rene!” cried his mother. 

“Steady, old girl,” said Mr. Fourmy, with an al- 
most tender firmness. He turned quietly round in his 
chair until he was looking sideways up at Rene. “Look 
here, young man, it takes two to make a scene, and 
I won’t have it. It’s no good trying to make a scene 
simply because you expected to have one if ever I 
came back. I spanked you the day before I left for 
throwing a knife at your brother in one of your bare- 
sark fits, and for two pins I’d turn you up and spank 
you now.” 

Then Rene’s memory played him a scurvy trick. 
“Boot or brush?” he asked himself, and a sick anger 
rose in him and hot tears welled into his eyes. He 
gasped and gurgled inarticulately, thinking he was 
making an appeal to his mother, but through his tears 
he seemed to see his father growing larger and larger, 
and in a gust of terror he lunged out of the room, 
seized his cap, and rushed from the house. 

“It isn’t fair! it isn’t fair!” he moaned. 

Other young men he knew had difficulties with their 
fathers, but to have a father suddenly materialize out 
of thin air and step back with exasperating ease into 
a relationship which a part of his family at least had 
forgotten, was too critical for the mind to bear. Rene 
had been priding himself on the fact that at last he 
was to be as other young men, a wage-earner, a reput- 
able citizen, a prop to his mother, a credit to his fam- 
ily and his own aspirations. And here suddenly he 
48 


A RETURN 


was to begin all over again. His painful emotions 
were akin to those of a small boy on the arrival of 
a new baby in his home, or to those of a tit on find- 
ing a cuckoo’s monstrous egg in its nest, and, being of 
a cultivated intelligence, he could not immediately 
and robustly draw on his instinct to adjust himself 
to the new circumstances. 

He called on George. The Nest was in darkness. 
He went on hammering at the door until the window 
above it was thrown open. 

“Who’s there ?” snarled George. “If it’s the police, 
the window’s left open for the cat, and I’m damned if 
I shut it.” 

“It’s me— Rene!” 

“What the hell do you want at this time of night?” 

“I must see you. Something has happened.” 

“What?” 

“Come down and let me in.” 

He was filled with a cold and shuddering feeling of 
being ridiculous as he waited. He wanted to run 
away, but that would have been even more absurd. 
The chain of the door rattled, the bolts rapped back, 
and George said: 

“Come in. You’ve wakened Elsie, and she’s not at 
all well.” 

“But I wanted to see you. Father’s come back.” 

“What?” 

“Father’s come back.” 

“Mother all right?” 

“She seems quite pleased.” 

“Then there’s nothing more to be said. If you 

49 


YOUNG EARNEST 


don’t like him, tell him he’s got to pay the rent. That’ll 
clear him out fast enough. Good night.” 

George seized Rene by the arm, lifted him through 
the door on to the step, closed the door, shot the bolts 
and the chain. In his astonishment Rene found him- 
self nearly back at 166 before he could realize the out- 
rage that had been done to his feelings. He had 
wanted to tell George that the atmosphere of the house 
was just horrible, and George had never thought of 
that. 

166 was in darkness too. How grim these little 
houses were in the darkness! How they invited vio- 
lence and the wickedness of the night ! How derelict 
they seemed! How fit for the harboring of wander- 
ing, evil men! Now he thought of his father as evil, 
a shadow come to obliterate the brightness that had 
grown and filled the house since George’s departure. 

He let himself in, saw that all the lights were out 
downstairs, the large coals taken from the dining- 
room fire, the windows and doors fastened. Then he 
crept upstairs on tiptoe in his stockinged feet and 
groped fearfully toward his mother’s door, half 
dreading some awful discovery. He could hear no 
sound. As he passed George’s room there came out 
of it his father’s rich, familiar snore. 


V 


SETTLING DOWN 

O the mad days that I have spent ! and to see how many 
of mine old acquaintances are dead! 

P ROFESSOR SMALLMAN had been lent by his 
university to deliver a series of lectures in Amer- 
ica, and some weeks of the term would pass before 
his return. Rene, therefore, had no escape from his 
father. Breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, he was 
there all the time on his best behavior, though with 
a naughty malice stirring in him and peeping out of 
his eyes. He ate — how he ate! Hardly a meal left 
remnants enough to provide for the next, and 
butcher’s meat, which before had only been got every 
third day, was now brought to the house every morn- 
ing. In an access of filial devotion, Rene had under- 
taken to relieve his mother of household accounts, al- 
ways a plague to her, and the little blood-stained 
butcher’s bills alarmed him by their number and the 
amount of money they represented. He hardly spoke 
to his father, avoided him, shut himself up in his 
bedroom, and there realized horribly that he was also 
avoiding his mother, that she made no protest, not 
even by glance or gesture, and that they were mak- 
5i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


ing him feel the intruder. The change in his mother 
was amazing. She was three times as active, and was 
often for hours together without her crochet-work. 
She, who was accustomed for days never to leave the 
house, now went out every afternoon with her hus- 
band to walk in Potter’s Park, or in the evening to 
visit the streets where they had lived, and to seek 
out old acquaintances. When her son was present she 
was discreet, and prattled reminiscently of people he 
had never known, or remembered only as names and 
remote presences. But often when he was in his 
room, he would hear them below talking excitedly, 
and his mother laughing or protesting. And he came 
to think of them as “they,” and they seemed to have 
so little they cared to or could share with him. 

One black night he had when, after coming in late 
in the afternoon, he found his mother unaided moving 
the heavy iron bedstead and wire mattress from 
George’s room to her own. He gulped down his dis- 
may, and stood on the stairs watching her. She had 
not heard him, and went on until suddenly she caught 
sight of him and jumped. 

“Oh!” 

“Shall I help you?” 

“It is — too heavy for me.” 

“Where is— he?” 

“He went out. He thought he saw old Mr. Timper- 
ley in Derby Street to-day. Of course you don’t re- 
member Mr. Timperley.” 

“In your room?” 

She hesitated: 


52 


SETTLING DOWN 


“We — we sold the old bed, you know.” 

He helped her without another word. Together in 
silence they put George’s bed up alongside her own, 
and in silence when it was done Rene left her. He 
went to his room and sat, staring unseeing at the five 
privet bushes and the old bicycle shed. 

Presently she came to him and sat on his bed, and 
gazed at him like a mournful, shy little bird. 

“You mustn’t make it hard for us, Rene.” 

“I — I thought I was making it easy.” 

“His brothers won’t see him.” 

“Why not?” 

“They won’t. They’re hard people, the Fourmys. 
They can’t forget the past. They say they won’t help 
me any more if I let him stay, and not a penny will 
they leave me.” 

“You’ll let him stay?” 

“He knows it was cruel of him to leave as — as he 
did. But he had a lot to bear, really he did, Rene. 
He was very proud. It’s his pride has been against 
him always, Rene.” 

“What did he do else?” 

“Nothing very much. Only people talked. And 
he didn’t get on. That was his pride too. You can 
do anything if only you get on. He never could work 
for other people. He was a clever man too. You 
get your cleverness from him. I’m sure it’s not from 
me. He was always trying different things, but he 
couldn’t get on. He did some silly things too.” 

“You won’t tell me, then?” 

“I have told you.” 


53 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“What’s he going to do? Go on eating and eat- 
ing?” 

“He’ll look for work. Of course, at his age, it 
won’t be easy.” 

“What’s he been doing all this time?” 

“He’s been rich and lost it all again. He came back 
to England with quite a lot of money.” 

“He didn’t think of you then.” 

“He lost it nearly all. Do be nice to him, Rene! 
He thinks such a lot of you. George is quite nice, and 
Elsie loves him already, but he thinks most of 
you. I’ve been telling him how wonderful you’ve 
been, and he says nothing must interfere with your 
career.” 

“But someone must make money.” 

“Only for a little. He says we could make much 
more with my money if it were re-invested.” 

Rene swung round. 

“He’s not to touch that, do you hear? You’re a 
soft fool, mother. He’s not to touch that. I’ll work 
myself to the bone first.” 

“That’s dear of you, Rene. And you will be nice 
to him, won’t you?” 

“All right, all right.” 

She kissed him and flitted away, and presently, to 
the devastation of his attempts to adopt what he con- 
sidered a worldly and wise point of view of the mat- 
ter, he heard her singing in her room. A loathing and 
disgust rushed through him. Men and women ! Men 
and women! It was George all over again, quintes- 
sence of George, here on the very fringes of his being. 

54 


SETTLING DOWN 


No escape from it! In the little house, all but the 
tiniest noises could be heard from end to end of it. 

His father came home late that night. He hummed 
as he groped upstairs and fumbled his way along the 
passage to the front room. The full hours of the 
night in towns, where huddled creatures live, poured in 
upon Rene as he lay in sleeplessness, staring, staring 
at the never-darkened sky. 

From this torment to escape he could find no other 
solace than the attempt to be “nice” to his father. It 
was forced on him, and after the first plunge he found 
it not so very difficult, and there was some reward in 
his mother’s anxious satisfaction. Both men played 
up to keep things lively for the woman, and the elder 
set himself almost desperately to make the younger 
laugh. At first when they were alone together Mr. 
Fourmy made the mistake of trying droll stories 
spiced and hot on his son, but he was met with a stare 
so blank and uncomprehending, so freezing, that he 
never tried them again. Then, more successfully, he 
drew on his own reminiscences, and practiced his not 
inconsiderable talent for caricature and exaggerated 
mimicry upon the odd characters he had known and 
the members of his own family. This met with en- 
couragement from Rene, who was interested. From 
his father’s chuckling monologue he learned that the 
Fourmys were the oddest family that ever was — 
Scotch, French, Dutch, Jewish, reg’lar English, in 
fact; Nonconformist for generations; clever, close, 
proud, hard, acquisitive, narrow, pious, with occa- 
sional outcrops of wickedness to leaven the lump; 

55 


YOUNG EARNEST 

shy, harsh, undemonstrative; loathing any kind of 
excess; clinging to the middle way, bound never to 
rise above respectable mediocrity; dreading anything 
so conspicuous as eminence; never reaching to any 
higher public office than a District Council or a Board 
of Guardians. 

“Two of my brothers are Guardians,” said Mr. 
Fourmy, “and they could predict no worse for me 
than that I should come to the workhouse. They know 
well enough that no Fourmy could ever get to prison. 
We can’t be bad enough.” 

“Where did we come from?” asked Rene. 

“Scotland, but that’s a long time ago. Your great- 
aunt Janet’s father started a tannery somewhere near 
Lancaster. That would be somewhere about the time 
of Napoleon. At least, I remember reading a lit- 
tle book the old gentleman wrote about a tour he 
made in France and Germany when the Continent was 
opened up after Elba and all that.” 

“But why are we fixed here?” 

“Don’t your big books tell you that?” 

For once in a way Rene saw that his father was 
twitting him. 

“Big books don’t account for humble folk like us.” 

“The biggest books do, my boy.” And to Rene’s 
surprise and delight his father raised his voice and 
trolled out some verses that excited and exalted him. 
They were all about joy and freedom and the awful- 
ness of losing them, but no single phrase bit into his 
mind to take possession of it. 

“Yes,” he said, “yes.” 


56 


SETTLING DOWN 


“Pooh!” said his father. “If we understood that 
we’d none of us be here, neither rich nor poor. We 
get a little excited about it, at least you and I do, but 
we can’t go any further — not far enough into our own 
minds, I mean — and we are left weaker for the attack 
of all the things that drag us down and bind us fast. 
A little squeeze for bread and butter, and we say it 
doesn’t matter, but may come all in good time. I used 
to be rather good at poetry, could remember anything 
I read or heard. Can’t do that now. I used to love 
it. The Fourmys hate it. Lord ! when I had my last 
row with my father, when he had said his say, I let 
fly at him with a page and a half of Milton and wound 
up with Shakespeare — you know: ‘Let me not to the 
marriage of true minds ’ ” 

“I know,” said Rene, though he had never read the 
Sonnets. 

“Lord! I was a young man, I was, and I went on 
being young for a surprisingly long time. It seemed 
there wasn’t anything in the world could take it from 
me. But it came to an end at last. How you do make 
me talk, to be sure ! I wish you’d tell me about your- 
self.” 

That shut Rene up completely. There was nothing 
to tell, nothing that would not dwindle and shrivel up 
in the telling. There was such mockery in this dis- 
turbing father of his that his timid little emotions, his 
shy desire to think well of him, to like him, to set what 
he found in him against what he knew and had heard, 
hid away, curled up in his mind and created a horrid 
congestion. But his father had a certain fascination 

57 


YOUNG EARNEST 


for him, and it was a relief to get him to talk. He 
never did learn why the Fourmys, rich and poor, were 
fixed where they were in the middle-class of Thrigsby, 
but he did get flashes and sparks which promised 
elucidation, and he did begin to discover that there 
were worlds on worlds outside, and minds which were 
not afraid of thought and not wholly set on money 
and the good opinion of others. It was a painful mys- 
tery to him that his father’s mind should lead him on 
so far, give him a shining promise of beauty — though 
beauty was the very last word that in his shyness of 
himself he would have used — and then by a cruel 
sleight of hand present him only with caricatures of 
Fourmys and neighbors and George. 

Mr. Fourmy on his elder son is worth quoting. He 
said : 

“George is a reg’lar Fourmy, a thorough Unitarian. 
They want one God. George desires to live in the 
worship of the one flesh.” 

He seemed to like George, was often at The Nest, 
and when George and Elsie came to them there was 
tapped in the queer man a vein of ribaldry which 
made Rene, even as he laughed, blush that such things 
could be said before a woman. 

George said of his father: 

“He’s a funny damned old rotter, but you can’t help 
liking him.” 

Rene had to admit that, but the increase in the 
weekly bills gave him many a sick moment, and though 
his father spent many hours away from home, there 
was never any talk of his finding work. Very quickly 
58 


SETTLING DOWN 


the household absorbed its new inmate and adjusted 
its habits, so far as was necessary, to his. Mr. Fourmy 
bought paints and brushes, and with these he would 
amuse himself all day. At half-past eight in the even- 
ing he would disappear, and often not return until 
the small hours of the morning. He never asked 
for money, and seemed always able to procure any- 
thing he wanted. 


VI 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 

As the reader’s curiosity (if he hath any) must be now 
awake, and hungry, we shall provide to feed it as fast as 
we can. 

E XCEPT for Mrs. Fourmy few letters came to 
1 66, and it was a great excitement for Rene 
when, a few weeks before the end of term, he came 
down in the morning to find a parcel waiting for him 
on the breakfast table. His father and mother 
watched him eagerly as he opened it, to find two large 
brown volumes, a German economic treatise translated 
by a Scots professor. A printed slip headed Thrigsby 
Post requested Mr. Fourmy to send a review not ex- 
ceeding four hundred words in length within a week. 
Pride and elation moved Rene. His cheeks glowed, 
his eyes shone, he caressed the covers of the books, 
took them up, and turned over the leaves. It was the 
first sign of recognition from the world outside school 
and university. 

“Professor Smallman said he would get me some 
reviewing.” Rene could only speak in gasps. He 
could not take his eyes off the books, and when his 
father reached out his hand for them, his impulse was 
to hug them and keep them from him. “He said he 
60 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 

thought he could get me some. But I never thought 
of the Post. It’s such a good paper.” 

“It’s Liberal, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Fourmy. 

“Yes. But of course I shouldn’t have anything to 
do with that side of it.” Rene had always been given 
to understand that he was a Conservative, and that 
only chapel people were Liberals. 

He ate very little breakfast, and immediately after- 
ward rushed upstairs, made his bed, and lay on it 
gloating over the precious books, picking up first one 
volume and then the other, hardly reading them, and 
beginning already to compose his review based on 
Professor Smallman’s dislike of the translator. Then 
he began to wonder how much he would be paid for 
it — one, two, four, five guineas. The editor of the 
Post was a very rich man. Would they print his 
name ? Presently his happiness was so intense that he 
could not bear not to share it, and he went downstairs. 
His mother had gone out. His father was in the din- 
ing-room painting. He had the lid of a cigar box 
and was covering it with a copy of a nude reproduced 
in some magazine from a picture in the Paris Salon 
of that year. Rene watched him. He worked with 
minute strokes of the brush, caressingly, carefully. 
Already he had painted several copies of the same pic- 
ture. 

“Why do you always paint the same thing?” asked 
Rene. 

“Nothing else worth painting.” Mr. Fourmy 
stopped, looked up at his son, winked, and hissed like 
a goose in a peculiar mocking laughter he affected 
61 


YOUNG EARNEST 


when he was most roguish. “She’s a beauty, this one. 
Like to have seen the original. Women. Not much 
else men care about, as you’ll find presently. I can 
sell as many of these as I care to paint. I’m going 
to do her smaller though, so’s she can be carried in the 
waistcoat pocket or a letter-case. I’ve got a watch- 
maker’s glass, so’s I can see what I’m doing with the 
brush.” And he took out the glass and screwed it 
into his eye and looked chuckling up at Rene. He was 
absurdly, childishly pleased with himself. 

“Does mother know?” asked Rene, all his elation 
oozing away. 

“She don’t know I sell ’em. I didn’t know I could 
myself. Never saw what’s been under my nose all my 
life. But he’s a clever man, is your father, much too 
clever to be a burden on his wife and family. Knock 
him down one day and he’s up the next.” 

Rene said heavily: 

“It’s like the shops in the Derby Road where they 
sell the photographs and the dirty books.” 

Mr. Fourmy waved his hand airily: 

“This, my boy, is art, hand-painted in oils. Put a 
gilt frame round it and it’s quite respectable. These 
swine think art is a bawdy thing.” 

“Where do you sell them? To a shop?” 

“No. To the gentlemen at the Denmark, the 
churchwardens and chapelgoers.” 

Rene sat dejectedly looking into the fire. At last 
he said: 

“I wish you hadn’t told me. It doesn’t seem worth 
while doing anything.” 


62 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 


He went back to his room, but his joy in the books 
had filtered away. To read through them was a heavy 
task which had become to him nothing but the com- 
mercial traffic of his time, knowledge, and brains for 
money. He had no motive for doing it but the cold 
necessity of somehow making a living. All day long 
he read and read until his eyes ached, and he sat far 
into the night writing and rewriting until he had pro- 
duced four hundred words that looked like the sort of 
stuff he read in the literary columns of the news- 
papers. 

A depressed mood of appalling skepticism seized 
him. His father and mother, his brother and sister- 
in-law, these were his world, and they were contented 
with a monotonous small happiness, and he was the 
fool to look for more. Ah! but the days in Scotland, 
the graciousness and the fun that those other peo- 
ple knew; the sweetness of waiting upon Cathleen’s 
coming; her coming, the hours of tenderness 
and pure laughter, and her warm comradeship 
and the zest of the emotions they could rouse 
in each other and turn to a golden glee! But 
that was all done, and there was now only pov- 
erty and disgrace, and beyond, the sniggering of 
the men who loved nothing but women and the idea of 
women. 

He kept back his review for three days, being fear- 
ful lest the editor should think him careless or over- 
eager, and he rather prided himself on his cunning in 
doing so. It was his first attempt to manipulate the 
impression he might make, and the illusion of subtle 

63 


YOUNG EARNEST 


activity it brought gave him some solace in his mis- 
ery. 

Other books came from the Post , and he wrote to 
thank Professor Smallman, who invited him to lunch 
on Sunday. 

He had been twice before to the Professor’s house, 
to the garden party which he gave annually to work 
off the social obligations incurred during the academic 
year. For Thrigsby he had a very good garden, and 
an old house in a neighborhood which still bore some 
traces of a rural character, though the regiments of 
little pink brick houses were bearing down on it with 
an alarming swiftness. His garden contained three 
plum trees and a pear tree, gooseberry and currant 
bushes, and raspberry canes. 

Mrs. Fourmy had thought the Smallmans must be 
what she called “grand people,” since they had lunch 
instead of dinner; but Mr. Fourmy remembered a 
Mr. Smallman who used to live in Kite Street and 
had two sons, of whom this might very well be one — 
a good-looking boy, neat and solemn, just a little too 
neat and obliging, always opening gates for old ladies 
and picking up handkerchiefs dropped by old gentle- 
men — that sort of boy. “Would call me 'Sir’ the only 
time I ever spoke to him. I’ll be bound that’s the 
one.” 

It helped Rene a little to know for certain that the 
Professor had once been a boy, but Mrs. Smallman he 
remembered as a lady of a gentleness and kindness al- 
most terrifying, so kind that she had a way of not 
64 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 


seeming to hear you when you were stuttering out 
some preposterously foolish remark. Everything was 
so easy for her; she was so sure of the strength of 
her position as a good hostess and the wife of a popu- 
lar and important man; and there were the children, 
who were allowed to look down from the nursery 
window at the garden party. You could not talk to 
Mrs. Smallman long without having your eyes drawn 
to them, and then, if you were a sensitive person like 
Rene, you felt that this house was full of an inti- 
macy jealous of its beauty, so that it repelled strang- 
ers. Friendliness there was, but it ended abruptly; 
the wife’s eyes lighting on the husband, the husband’s* 
on the wife, or the eyes of both meeting and turning 
to the children at the window could bring it to a cruel 
and sudden close. 

Rene could not explain to himself the uneasiness 
that came over him at the garden parties, or the dread 
of it that overwhelmed him as he pushed open the 
gate and rang the bell on that Sunday. 

There was a bright green parasol in the hall table, 
and by it were two bowler hats. From the drawing- 
room came a faint buzz of chatter, and he saw that it 
contained the Professor and his wife; Blease, the Jew- 
ish Professor of English; M’Elroy, the great man of 
the University, captain of the cricket eleven, Presi- 
dent of the Union — it would take a page to enumerate 
his distinctions; a little man who looked like an un- 
successful attempt to repeat the Professor; and a 
young lady in a bright green costume. Rene observed 
at once that the other men were wearing black boots, 
65 


YOUNG EARNEST 

and became dreadfully conscious of his own new 
brown pair. 

“I’m so glad you could come,” said Mrs. Smallman, 
and she introduced him to Blease. 

“Seen you about,” said the Jew. “Third-year man, 
aren’t you?” 

“Just beginning my third year,” said Rene mis- 
erably. 

Blease had made his remark sound friendly, and 
acute. Rather clever of a Professor to be able to place 
a man outside his own subject! 

“We stand for something, you know,” continued 
Blease. “Culture! A handful of men upholding the 
standard. Good for us to be kept in touch with 
working life. Don’t you think so, M’Elroy?” 

“Yes. That’s where we score over Oxford and 
Cambridge, though they can never understand 
that.” 

Their talk was above Rene. He remembered Cam- 
bridge as a place of enthralling beauty, but to com- 
pare this and that was rather too sweeping for him, 
and he found it baffling, and to regard himself as 
standing for anything was entirely foreign to his 
temper. The talk shot to and fro above him, and he 
found his eyes being engaged by the bright green. 
The young lady was sparkling, easy, gay, a little fig- 
ure of energy and charm. 

“She is beautiful,” said Rene to himself. 

Then he decided that she was not beautiful. She 
turned her face into another light, and beauty came 
into it again; another turn and it vanished. A will- 
66 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 


(/-the- wisp, the hunting of which became an absorb- 
ing pursuit. 

At lunch Rene sat opposite her, and hardly ever 
took his eyes from her face. Only when he seemed in 
danger of meeting her gaze did he turn away. Once 
he met her eyes and she smiled, seemed to be consid- 
ering him gravely and very seriously in the depths 
of her mind, then dismissed him. 

“She is beautiful,” thought he, and from that mo- 
ment she had his homage. 

Presently she appealed to him: 

“Mr. M’Elroy won’t have it that Thrigsby is better 
than London. What do you say?” 

“I’ve never been to London,” replied Rene. 

“Don’t you love Thrigsby?” 

“It’s been my home always. I don’t know that I 
ever thought about it.” 

M’Elroy said: 

“One thinks about everything nowadays.” 

Something in the young man’s tone roused Rene 
to protest. 

“Oh no . . . lots of things one does without . . 
But he swallowed the rest. A sudden flow and ebb of 
emotion had left him speechless, and he felt utterly 
foreign to the company and to the charmed atmos- 
phere of the household. Mrs. Smallman talked to 
him for a little, but he felt that she was speaking 
through him at her husband, so that he could not keep 
his face toward her, but was constantly turning 
toward the Professor as though the reply were to 
come from him, or would at any rate be worthless 
67 


YOUNG EARNEST 

without his indorsement. And always the Professor 
smiled with a vague friendliness that was discon- 
certing. 

After the meal he was taken to the study, a long 
room with books all round the walls, ponderous 
books, blue books, year after year of reports of 
learned institutions ; reproductions of Italian pictures ; 
photographs of Mrs. Smallman on the mantelpiece, 
a photograph of Mrs. Smallman on the desk. Rene 
was given a large chair and a small cigar, which he 
began to smoke before he realized what he was do- 
ing. He rarely smoked, did not care for it, and pres- 
ently he dropped the cigar into the fireplace. The 
Professor stood looking out of the window. Two of 
the children were playing under the plum-tree. The 
feeling of being thrust out assailed Rene. The Pro- 
fessor turned: 

“Well?” he asked. “What’s the trouble?” 

“My father ” began Rene. 

“Ah! Well?” 

“He deserted my mother a long time ago. He 
came back. My brother’s married.” 

“I see. So you’re the only possible breadwinner. 
Any work in your father ? How old is he ?” 

“I don’t know how old he is. But work? No.” 

“It’s bad luck, but it often happens. I’ve had to 
keep my father since he was fifty. What about your 
family? The name’s well known in Thrigsby.” 

So Professor Smallman was the boy his father 
remembered! Rene gained confidence. It was some- 
thing to know that his experience was not singular. 

68 


PROFESSOR SMALLMAN 


“They did help until my father came back. They 
won't now, and I don't want them to. They don't 
understand the pain of receiving charity uncharitably 
given. They call it ingratitude.” 

“They have their point of view.” 

“So have I mine,” said Rene, astonished at his own 
boldness. 

“Your work’s good,” said the Professor. “Tweed- 
dale’s reports of you were always excellent. As you 
know, I don't come in touch with men until their 
third year, and then only if they’re good. You can 
take that from me. I must tell you — it wouldn't be 
fair not to — that one doesn’t know in the least how 
good you are going to be. One has an uncertainty 
about you. In a way, that’s all to the good. I like 
what you’ve written for the Post. So does Pigott 
the editor. What about journalism? Do you write 
easily ?” 

“No.” 

“It rather scotches that, then. Pupils? You could 
make a little that way, but it’s drudging work when 
you’re reading as well. I could give you two first- 
year men, pretty bad, both of them, and Miss Brock, 
the girl you met at lunch, has a young brother who 
can’t get through the matric. That’s as much as 
you could manage.” 

Rene had no notion how much he ought to be 
paid. He asked, and when he heard the amount his 
heart overflowed with gratitude, and he walked home 
with a new vigor in his stride and a prouder car- 
riage of his head. His father and mother were out. 

69 


YOUNG EARNEST 


His news would not keep, and he went round to 
George, first changing his brown boots for black. He 
reckoned that in three terms he would be able to 
make nearly as much as his brother’s whole income, 
and would have the vacations to repair any damage 
done to his own work. Then he would take his 
degree, and the whole world, all life, would open 
up before him. 


VII 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 

A man’s heart may minister comfort to him in the hopes 
of that thing for which he yet has no ground to hope. 

T HE Brocks lived in Galt’s Park, an elegant dis- 
trict shut off from the rest of Thrigsby by 
gates and unoccupied lodges. Here, in ease and amid 
gardens, dwelt families of an old-established pros- 
perity, many Germans, Armenians, and Greeks, and 
some of the descendants of Thrigsby’s famous men. 
Here also were the two hostels of the university, some 
schools, one co-educational seminary, the house of a 
painter with a great local fame, and that of the mu- 
nicipal organist. Good men had lived in Galt’s Park, 
and it had once been the center of Thrigsbeian cul- 
ture; but now all those who dwell in it have the air 
of having been left behind, and the little pink houses 
are menacing it, even as they menace the garden of 
Professor Smallman. 

Through the winter Rene Fourmy came twice a 
week to coach young Kurt Brock in mathematics and 
French. Occasionally he was asked to stay to lunch, 
and then he was too sore from the discomfort of Mrs. 
Brock’s broken English — she was a German from 
7i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Hamburg — to be able to support Miss Brock, Linda, 
in her efforts to make conversation. Also he was 
engrossed in the problem first presented to him on 
his original meeting with her : Was she, was she not, 
beautiful? Sometimes for a fortnight he would 
decide that she was so, and then his heart would go 
out to her in homage, an impersonal emotion bestowed 
on her as though she were a tree or a sunset. That 
she might be intelligent interested him not at all. Ex- 
cept in the case of Cathleen Bentley, where he had 
been surprised into an intimacy, refined and diluted 
with adoration, he had regarded women as existing 
only to receive in ignorance his shy homage. 

As with the Smallmans, so here he had to give his 
mother a detailed report of the household and its 
manner of living. To her they also were “grand,” 
and she never tired of listening to the tale of their 
doings, their servants, what they had to eat and 
drink, what they sat on, what they wore, and whom 
they entertained. He reported faithfully — the rings 
on Mrs. Brock’s fingers, her richly-clad inelegant fig- 
ure, her dog-like eyes that could never smile, her 
enormous appetite — whereon Mrs. Fourmy would 
sigh and say: 

“I never was a big eater myself.” 

Kurt, the boy, Rene liked, for he was so thoroughly 
convinced of his own stupidity that it was impossible 
to teach him anything. German only in name, he was 
English and Thrigsbeian in everything else, and Rene 
felt almost that he belonged to an older generation 
when he discovered that Kurt could not remember 
72 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 


the horse-trams in the Derby Road, or a time when 
there were no motor-cars. Kurt possessed a motor- 
cycle, or it possessed him, so that almost everything 
else in his eyes was “bally rot. ,, He excepted music, 
which, with his family, he loved German-fashion, 
greedily and indiscriminately. His attitude toward 
his sister was that of one who knows so much that he 
has nothing left to hope. Against his mother and sister 
he used to protest to Rene, whom he thought of as a 
“poor beggar” but a “good enough sort.” Rene never 
saw it, but often Kurt would outmaneuver Linda in 
her attempts to waylay his tutor, and once he went 
so far as to mumble this warning: 

“What I can’t stand about women is the way they 
go nosing round.” 

“Do they?” asked Rene, looking up from Hall 
and Knight. 

“My sister does. She wants to know how a man 
works. She’s like me with a motor. Haven’t you got 
sisters ?” 

“No. I wish I had.” 

“I don’t know. Having a sister like Lin is enough 
to put a man off women for life.” 

“She has always been very charming to me.” 

Kurt snorted. 

Another day he growled out : 

“Linda says you are like Schiller. You’d better 
look out. She said the last young feller was like Mo- 
zart.” 

“I’ve never seen a picture of Mozart,” replied Rene. 

73 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Silly sort of face.” 

That very day Linda outmaneuvered Kurt. As a 
rule he walked with Rene to the gates of Galt’s Park, 
but now, believing his sister to be safely out of the 
way, and also wishing to change the tire of his motor- 
cycle, he let Rene depart alone, and Rene was not gone 
above a hundred yards when he encountered Linda. 
He bowed, removed his hat, and was for making on, 
when she stopped. 

“I’m glad to meet you,” she said, with such a smile 
that Rene felt once and for all that she was beautiful, 
and was so confused by his own enthusiasm that he 
did not take the hand she proffered, and put her to 
the awkwardness of withdrawing it. 

“I — I ” He looked desperately up and down 

the road, but could find no topic, and ended lamely by 
saying : 

“I — I like your brother.” 

“Oh! Kurt! But I am glad to have met you. I 
hoped you would be at the Smallmans last Sunday. I 
was so disappointed.” Her voice too was beautiful in 
its friendly, emphatic cadences. 

“I — I wasn’t asked.” 

“Oh, you aren’t asked. You go. Everybody goes.” 

(He had never been able to identify himself with 
everybody, or to take everybody’s doing for a reason 
for his own.) 

She went on: 

“I wanted to ask you if you would care to come 
and hear me play at the Goetheverein — that’s the Ger- 
man club — next Wednesday. It’s a good program; 

74 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 


Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms. You’ll love Beetho- 
ven.” 

“My mother plays, but her piano has yellow keys, 
and the music is faded like the keys.” 

“It must be beautiful to understand your mother. 
Professor Smallman has told me all about you, and I 
do hope you’ll come.” 

“I’d like to come.” 

“That’s settled then. We have supper at the Verein, 
and I’ll introduce you to some people you’ll like to 
know. It’s nice to know your friends’ friends, don’t 
you think?” 

Rene felt vaguely uneasy. 

“Friends’ friends,” he repeated almost interroga- 
tively. 

“Friends,” said Miss Brock, “are those whom you 
have always known you would meet.” This she said 
with a kind of recklessness that was almost exaltation. 
It certainly startled Rene into something like emotion, 
into the desire to respond. For the first time during 
their conversation his eyes met hers full, and he was 
confronted with a smile so charmingly inquisitive that 
he was compelled to satisfy their curiosity and he 
jerked out: 

“Yes. Friends.” 

And it seemed to him that she had given and he had 
accepted — something. Gift and acceptance were so 
surreptitious that the nature of them was a matter of 
almost complete indifference. The great thing was the 
giving and the accepting, and the excitement of the 
transaction drowned the little emotion that had stirred 


75 


YOUNG EARNEST 


in him. One more glance he stole at her, and he saw 
that she was satisfied, that their conversation was at 
an end. Yet neither could end it, and it was a relief 
to both when Kurt came hooting and snorting by on 
his motorcycle. 

“Till Wednesday then,” said Miss Brock. 

“You — you didn’t say what time.” 

“Oh! Eight o’clock. But you might like to come 
with us — call for us at half -past seven. I wish you 
could speak German.” 

“I do a little.” 

“Mother will like that. Good-by.” 

She turned and walked away. Rene stood rooted to 
the ground. At his feet he saw her handkerchief. He 
stooped and picked it up. He dared not run after her. 
He pressed the handkerchief to his lips, then angrily 
squeezed it up into a ball and thrust it into his trous- 
ers pocket. This done, he shook himself, threw back 
his head, and strode vigorously homeward. He said 
to himself : 

“I’m damned if I read love poems to her.” 

He had arrived at the conclusion that but for the 
love poems things would never have got so madden- 
ingly out of hand with that other maiden in Scotland. 

He added: 

“But she really is beautiful.” 

Reading a book at supper that night, he knocked a 
glass of beer over onto his trousers, fumbled for his 
handkerchief, found Linda’s, mopped up the beer with 
it, and gave it to his mother to be washed. She 
washed it with her own hands that night, ironed it, 
76 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 


and placed it on his dressing-table so that next morn- 
ing he was confronted by the embroidered name — 
Linda. 

On the Wednesday evening he clad himself in his 
best black coat, the same he had had since he was seven- 
teen, put on a white dicky and cuffs, and punctually at 
7 130 stood between the stucco pillars on either side of 
the Brocks’ front door. The family was waiting for 
him in the hall. The women were muffled up in veils, 
and Kurt was wearing a very smart overcoat and new 
patent-leather boots. Behind Kurt in the darkness — 
for the hall was lit only by one flickering gas-jet in a 
ground-glass globe — stood another male figure. This 
advanced into the light and was revealed as M’Elroy. 

“You know each other,” said Linda. 

Kurt cut in with: 

“Of course, and Fourmy thinks he is so like Mo- 
zart.” 

Rene felt a pang of uneasiness. He turned to Linda 
to find her eyes resting now on M’Elroy, now on him- 
self, with quick little darting glances that seemed to 
take in every detail. It exasperated him to be pitted 
against M’Elroy, but, the rivalry having been intro- 
duced, though unsought by himself, he rose to it, and 
so, he felt, did M’Elroy. By way of protest Rene 
moved nearer to Mrs. Brock, who was sitting on the 
bottom stair. 

“Gut Abend !” he said. “Ich bin ” 

“Na, Sie sprechen Deutsch? So ist’s gut. 1 st mir 
sehr lieb Deutsch zu horen.” 

“Aber nicht ” 


77 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Sie sprechen sehr gut. Mein Sohn wird nie 
Deutsch sprechen. Im Goetheverein aber, wo man so 
schone Musik ” 

“Ja,” interrupted Rene at a venture, and he found 
that, with these three expressions, he could get along 
very well and keep Mrs. Brock perfectly happy talking 
away as she never did when the use of English op- 
pressed her. She never stopped. She talked him into 
the cab that came for them, out of it, up the stairs into 
the German club, and into the concert-room where 
she presented him to other women like herself, who 
nodded and smiled at his fumbled utterances — and 
talked. 

The room was arranged like a restaurant with little 
tables all round it, and the platform at one end slightly 
raised. For the most part the audience sat in little 
family groups and drank beer and ate sandwiches. 
Rene found himself confined between Mrs. Brock and 
another stout matron, and began to feel rather op- 
pressed and to wish he had not come. Kurt and 
M’Elroy had joined a band of young men who took 
possession of a corner and looked on at the scene with 
English disapproval of its Germanism. Some of them 
Rene knew for Meyers and Schoeners and Krauses of 
the second and third generation. 

The room was soon filled with smoke, and the atmos- 
phere became very thick, but the Germans ate and 
drank till their faces shone. And greedily they gulped 
down the music, which was beautiful and charming and 
sentimental by turns, though all seemed to meet with 
the same approval. A pale young Jew played the violin 

78 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 

until Rene was near tears and Mrs. Brock heaved fat 
sighs of contentment; a portly Austrian with a sweet 
little tenor voice sang Schubert’s Trout song so neatly 
and with such ease that Rene wriggled with pleasure ; 
and there were quartets and a solo flute and a piano 
duet by two little blonde girls with pink legs and ab- 
surd pale eyes, with which they ogled their papa in the 
audience and the portrait of the Emperor William on 
the wall ; and Linda played a Beethoven sonata (rather 
dull), and the Prelude of Rachmaninoff, which was 
received with thunderous applause. She wore a white 
dress and looked very fine, plump, and comely, with her 
white hands hovering over her and descending on the 
keys, and hef head swaying until upon the close of 
the music it drooped to show a beautiful line from her 
neck to her waist. Rene had been so moved by the 
music that his eyes caught greedily at this extra pleas- 
ure, and they never moved from Linda’s face as she 
stepped down from the platform, and came forward 
looking for her party. She was greeted with “Prosits” 
and raised tankards as she passed between the tables. 
Then she stopped and gazed over to the corner where 
Kurt was sitting. M’Elroy stood up to catch her 
attention. Rene saw that, and also how Linda shrank 
away from the assertion and the claim, feigned that 
she had not seen, and threaded her way toward her 
mother’s table. To cover her coming, Rene began to 
talk wildly in German : 

“Das war wunderschon. Ich habe nie solches Kla- 
vierspiel gehort. Ich bin ” 

“Linda versteht. Ja. Aber sie fiihlt nicht mehr 

79 


YOUNG EARNEST 


als ” And a torrent of long-involved sentences de- 

scended on Rene and brought him to a hopeless bewil- 
derment. That had been his growing condition. This 
incursion into a foreign world, into an atmosphere of 
easy social intercourse, was for him, a dweller among 
the humble ingregarious inhabitants of mediocre 
streets, an ordeal, a fierce conflict with impressions. 
Already to have had so much music to absorb had put 
some strain upon him. The effort to follow Mrs. 
Brock’s conversation had been exhausting, and to save 
himself he clung to Linda and the idea of Linda. He 
rose as she came up. She stood for a moment with 
her hand in her mother’s, looking, for a brief space, 
like a Cranach Eve, all charm and tenderness, the very 
bloom of womanhood upon her. She took his chair, 
and he had to fetch another. He was forced to place 
it close to hers, so that he had some difficulty in not 
touching her. Presently she moved so that the smallest 
accidental gesture must make him touch her. He 
edged away, and she turned and looked at him search- 
ingly, inquisitively. His face was blank as that of a 
statue. His mind knew no thought. He seemed to 
himself to be drowning in a languor that was part 
weariness, part excitement, at her propinquity. 

She laughed, and her laughter roused him, but al- 
ready she was talking animatedly to her mother and 
her mother’s friends, and Rene became absorbed in 
contemplating her honey-colored hair, the rounding 
line of her shoulder, the pretty modeling of her cheek 
and neck. And, through her conversation with her 
mother, with her white shoulders and the pretty mod- 
80 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 


eling of her cheek and neck she carried on with Rene 
an intercourse more terrifyingly intimate than any he 
had ever known. He had a disquieting sense of using 
more faculties than he had ever suspected in himself. 
It was pleasantly adventurous, but to a youth of his 
virtue it savored too alarmingly of black magic that 
her attention should be upon him while her words 
were elsewhere, and that he should be so keenly aware 
of her. It sent the room whirling round him, made 
his identity, which hitherto had seemed definite enough 
for all the apparent purposes of life, melt and trickle 
away, and cruelly transferred the center of his uni- 
verse from himself to Linda. And, when she looked 
toward him again, it was almost as though she had 
surprised his state, so certain did she look, but still in- 
quisitive and malicious. 

“Well ? Did you talk German ?” 

“I said you were wunderschon.” He leaned for- 
ward so that his hand touched her arm. He was so 
desperate that boldness was his only course. She had 
taken something from him. He was in a mood to 
claim it. 

“Am I?” she said. “You looked as if you didn’t 
see me.” 

“But I did see you all the time, especially when you 
drooped your head.” 

“Oh! Then!” 

And with the acuteness of his desperation he per- 
ceived that she was aware of the effectiveness of the 
drooping of her head. That made him angry, though 
he knew not why. 


81 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“It’s so hot in here,” she resumed; “will you take 
me home ? It would be nice to walk. The others will 
drive.” 

She explained to her mother, and Rene followed 
her, torn between expectancy and alarm. At the door 
he met M’Elroy. For a moment he was delighted to 
see that hero, saw in him an agent of relief. 

“It’s too bad, Linda,” said M’Elroy; “I haven’t had 
a word with you all evening.” 

“Well? There are other evenings, and we are both 
so young.” She said this with a rather pretty German 
accent, the assumption of which seemed to infuriate 
M’Elroy, for he flung off with an angry “All right !” 
and left them. Linda smiled slowly to herself, and 
Rene was conscious of a doom settling on himself, and 
all his hope seemed to have gone with M’Elroy. 

They parted to go to their respective cloakrooms, 
and Rene told himself that she would change her mind, 
would dismiss him also and wait for her mother, that 
what his eyes had seen he had not seen, that, after all, 
Linda desired of him nothing but the common civility 
of his escort. But all his attempted evasions only 
excited him the more, and by the time he met Linda 
again at the door he was speechless and in a sweat. 

The night was cool, clouded, and dark. Rene walked 
very fast. 

“I can’t keep this up,” said Linda, and he dropped 
to a crawl. 

“That’s better,” she said with a sigh, as they 
walked down the nigh empty streets. “Oh, dear, I 
should be so sorry if you hadn’t been happy.” 

82 


FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 


“I — I was happy. I loved the music.” 

“You can tell almost everything in music.” 

“If you have anything to tell.” 

“How droll you are — so literal.” 

“Miss Brock •” said Rene. They were walking 

very slowly now. They had turned down the last 
lighted street before the darkness of Galt’s Park. It 
gaped before them, inviting, menacing, romantic, rous- 
ing him to a mood of antagonism to the growing fasci- 
nation she was exercising over him. 

“Droll?” he said. “I don’t know. I mean what I 
say, though. I can’t always say what I mean.” 

“Who can?” asked she. 

“I mean, suppose you have a feeling for anything, 
for your father or your mother or something beauti- 
ful, and the feeling is so big that it can’t get out ” 

“One gets to think,” said Linda in a quiet little voice, 
soothing, caressing, “that men don’t have feelings like 
that.” 

They passed through the gates into the darkness of 
the Park. They walked on in silence, slower, slower, 
till they came to a weeping tree that hung right over 
the footpath. Here they stopped altogether. The 
blood beat at his temples, he was near choking, and 
there was Linda in his arms and he had kissed her, 
shyly, coolly, almost defiantly. It was soon over, but 
she lingered, and out of the darkness came her voice 
saying : 

“But you are the drollest dear.” 

Stung into a passionate desire to justify his situa- 
tion, he cried : 


83 


.YOUNG EARNEST 


“By God, but I do love you.” 

A little cry from her (he scarcely heard it), a strong 
embrace, and there came' another kiss, wherein was 
neither sweetness nor delight, but only a bitter hunger. 


VIII 


INTIMACY 
By hunger sharply sped 

To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use. 

S OON Rene found himself engaged upon an inti- 
macy with Linda Brock — that is to say, he was 
ever at her command, her constant escort, her listener. 
She talked of everything, seemed to empty her mind 
for him. Everything she discussed — the relation of 
the individual to the race, the race’s rights in the indi- 
vidual, childbirth, the upbringing of children, and the 
position of women. He had not her reading, and was 
at first fogged by her discourse, her voluble juggling 
with topics and ideas that could not enter his mind 
without engendering a certain heat and releasing some 
emotion. It was not long, however, before he found 
himself master of her jargon, not long either before 
she found out how to use it to bring him to a confu- 
sion from which there was no issue but by kisses and 
embraces, and because he kissed and embraced he 
loved, or believed that he loved. All his unhappiness 
he ascribed to their necessary separations, and he was 
persuaded that his soreness could be healed, his dis- 
satisfactions repaired in a future possession. The 

85 


YOUNG EARNEST 


force of old habit kept his working life intact, and 
there he was happy and proud to think that in his love 
there should be so noble a coolness. He tried to ex- 
plain this to her, and she said : 

“Yes, of course. You must keep your work sepa- 
rate. Love and fine thinking, you know.” 

He liked the phrase, not knowing it for a quotation ; 
but he never observed that she always set herself to 
disturb his coolness, and never let him go from her till 
it was drowned in a flood of warmth. 

She took him in hand, made him buy clothes, gloves, 
spats, chose his ties for him and his shirts ; discovered 
that he only wore one shirt a week, and tacitly in- 
formed him that two was the irreducible minimum; 
persuaded him to abolish the parting in his hair and to 
brush it back; to abandon his straight for winged col- 
lars ; presented him with gaily-colored socks ; lent him 
books, modern works of fiction and fashionable philos- 
ophy ; induced him to become a member of the Union, 
though she could never get him to speak at debates. 
On her instigation he joined a tennis club in the sum- 
mer term, proved rather skillful, and was invited by 
M’Elroy to play for the University second team. 

Linda was ambitious for him, but she could not 
make him ambitious, and she failed to develop opin- 
ions in him; but always, just as she was despairing of 
him and on the point of dismissing him from her 
mind as dull, he would come out with some simple 
comment that delighted her with its directness and 
force. Then she would go to Professor Smallman 
and talk about Rene, and the Professor would say: 

86 


INTIMACY 


“A good sound brain. Nothing unusual except that 
one feels in him things unroused. No passion.” 

“Ah! Passion!” 

“Yes,” he said, purring, “I put it rather neatly, I 
think, the other day. The temperament of a clerk 
with a brain too good for that kind of work. He has 
a conscience.” 

“But do you think he will do anything?” 

“He will do what he thinks right.” 

“Then you do agree that he is a force ? I feel that 
so strongly about him.” 

Professor Smallman smiled in his charming, unin- 
terested way. 

“Not much good being a force if you are an econo- 
mist. That’s specialist’s work. Even business would 
be better.” 

And Linda began to map out a career for Rene — 
business, the city council, Parliament, and thereaf- 
ter — who knows? 

Rene was very docile. His friendship for Linda 
made life more gracious, more full, and he was shed- 
ding the awkwardness that had grown on him during 
his two years of solitude. He was able to go to Pro- 
fessor Smallman’s whenever he liked, and other houses 
had been thrown open to him. 

At first he had endeavored to bring the new spirit 
that he had won into his life at home, but his father 
had become merely ribald, and in his mother the spark 
of feeling that had been struck out of her on his return 
from Scotland had died away and would not come 

87 


YOUNG EARNEST 


again. What she felt and thought she concealed with 
chatter, and too many of her notes were now exasper- 
atingly echoes of her husband’s. For a short while 
Rene went through an agony of shame when he felt his 
parents as a drag on him, and he could never return 
home without an acute feeling of sadness. To coun- 
teract this he used to talk to Linda of his mother as 
she had been before his father’s return, brave, humor- 
ous, quick to see and to understand. In such talk 
Linda delighted, and she made him promise to intro- 
duce her to his household. 

It was arranged. 

“Afternoon tea, I suppose,” said Mrs. Fourmy. 
“Thin bread and butter in the parlor.” 

“I think she’d like what we always have. She 
particularly said you weren’t to make any fuss.” 

“But I’d like to wear my black silk. I don’t often, 
now.” 

“You can wear what you like, mother. Only let us 
have tea as we always have it. I’m sure she’d like it 
better. Not sardines or tinned salmon or any of those 
things. They only have light tea because they have 
dinner afterward. It would be silly of us to pretend 
to be anything but what we are.” 

“But they’ll think ” 

“I don’t care what they think.” 

Mrs. Fourmy stole a quick glance at him and said : 

“No. You never do.” 

Her tone roused him to a hope that the old mother 
had come again, and he turned to her, only to see the 
quick light die down in her eyes and into them come the 
88 


INTIMACY 


querulous questioning expression that seemed to for- 
bid him to pass beyond the empty words and looks 
she gave him. He realized then how false an idea he 
must have given to Linda, and he wished she were not 
coming. 

When the day arrived, just before he went to fetch 
Linda he sought out his mother, and found her dress- 
ing in her room with his father lying on his bed smok- 
ing and reading. 

“I’m going now,” said Rene. “I shan’t be more than 
half an hour.” 

“I don’t mind betting,” chuckled his father, “that 
you’ll be more than that. There’s no end to it when 
these women get to dressing up for each other. Look 
at your mother ; she’s been brushing her hair this half- 
hour past.” 

“I thought you were out,” said Rene, cold with an 
almost hatred. 

“Me? Tea-partying’s my line. Always has been.” 

“Don’t tease him,” said Mrs. Fourmy. “Don’t tease 
him.” 

Mr. Fourmy had his waistcoat unbuttoned, so that to 
Rene he seemed all fat stomach bulging through coarse 
shirting. He turned away in disgust. As he closed the 
door he heard his mother say: 

“It isn’t fair when the boy’s in love.” 

He held the door open, and heard his father turn on 
the creaking bed and laugh and say: 

“Love? A gawk like that? Statues are his line, 
not women.” 


89 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Upon that Rene so lost himself in a sick dread that 
he was hardly conscious as he walked, and seemed to 
have been marvelously propelled from Hog Lane to 
Galt’s Park. 

Linda was ready for him in a light muslin frock and 
an adorable little tip-tilted hat. He had never seen her 
so pretty. 

They decided to walk by way of Potter’s Park to 
see the flowers. Rene could hardly get his words out, 
but he felt that he must do something to explain. 

“You may be disappointed, you know. It mayn’t be 
all that you think it is.” 

“Oh, but I have seen the outside of the house, and 
one knows what to expect. I mean, if you saw the out- 
side of our house you’d know the inside was pretty 
much the same as hundreds of others. The curtains 
always give you away. And nearly all the houses on 
this side of Thrigsby are like yours. When I was at 
school I knew a girl who lived next door to you. 
And, of course, I’m excited because it is — don’t 
you think — reassuring when you are fond of people 
to know that they have relations like the rest of 
the world.” 

Rene’s shyness, the delicacy of his feelings had 
forced upon her the use of the phrase, “fond of each 
other.” For all the excitement she had roused in him 
he had never become possessive nor made any attempt 
to assert a monopoly. And one evening when she had 
flirted with M’Elroy at the tennis club he had left her 
to it, apparently not at all distressed, and subsequently 
he visited on her none of the jealousy she had ex- 
90 


INTIMACY 


pected. With M’Elroy her relationship had become 
nothing but jealousy, and she preferred Rene’s diffi- 
dence to that. And also, as she had shaped Rene out- 
wardly, so inwardly she hoped to mold him to her 
liking. M’Elroy was too conceited for that. 

“I promise you I shan’t be disappointed,” she said. 

“I want to ask you not to mind anything my father 
may say. He does talk so. I hoped he would not be 
in.” 

“You dear silly, I shan’t mind anything. I shall like 
it. I want to see how you live, and if I don’t like any- 
thing it will only be the more wonderful that you are 
you.” 

He gripped her arm very tight. She laughed though 
he hurt her. It was the first uninvited caress he had 
given her. 

“You are so strong,” she said, and she took his arm 
and did not relinquish it until they came to the gate 
of 166. 

To his dismay Rene found Elsie with his father and 
mother. She declared that she had only dropped in, 
but she was arrayed in her most garish best and had 
put on her primmest and most artificial manner, talking 
mincingly like a chorus girl. And she patronized 
Linda, swaggered over her as the married woman, 
chattered about her darling baby, and made the party 
so uncomfortable that Linda could not hold her own, 
and a gloom would have descended on them had not 
Mr. Fourmy come to the rescue and told droll stories, 
spiced and hot, of the doings of women in various 
parts of the world. He cut into Elsie’s gushing stories 
9i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


with the story of the marine and the admiral’s French 
governess, and wound up : 

“In Brazil the women eat men. No half measures'. 
Eat you they do. Look to the right or the left and 
they knife you. What I can’t make out, Miss Brock, is 
why any men stay in England.” 

Linda laughed merrily. 

“Hardly complimentary to us ! But you came back, 
you know.” 

“So I did, for my old age. England’s an old man’s 
country.” 

“You won’t get me to believe that, or Rene either.” 

“Ah, but Rene can’t see things as they are. Short- 
sighted Rene is. And George is blind; isn’t he, 
Elsie?” 

Elsie giggled. She had been wanting to giggle for 
some time, and the appeal to her set her off. She could 
not stop herself. 

“Oh! Lor’!” she gasped, “you are funny, Mr. Four- 
my. You ought to be in a pantomime. I never laugh 
like I do with you.” 

And once more Elsie dominated the party. Rene 
wilted. Linda drank the many cups of tea pressed on 
her by Mrs. Fourmy in her nervous anxiety. Conver- 
sation flagged, sputtered, and Mr. Fourmy in despera- 
tion kept Elsie giggling with familiar jokes. Linda 
laughed at them too, and Rene sank into gloom and his 
mother watched him anxiously. 

At five o’clock Elsie gave a little scream and said she 
must hurry away to see that the servant (she had no 
servant) had made George’s tea. She hurried away, 
92 


INTIMACY 


and then, relieved of the oppression of her presence, 
Rene was just beginning to hope for better things when 
Linda, to escape from the table, asked if she might 
see the picture on the easel in the corner of the room. 
Delighted, Mr. Fourmy turned the picture to the 
light. Linda bit her lip and a dimple came in her 
cheek. 

“Not bad for an amateur/’ said Mr. Fourmy. “Just 
the lid of a cigar-box and a little paint. I never did 
care about anything but the figure.” 

He took the picture up and looked at it lovingly, 
and with pride and in a queer confidential voice that 
startled Rene and stung Mrs. Fourmy into a sudden 
attention, he said: 

“You can understand an old man liking to do some- 
thing with his hands, and it’s strange how, when I paint 
a little bit like that” — he pointed to the hip — “it 
brings back wonderful moments I have had and rare 
pleasures, not just in remembering, but as they were — 
wonderful !” 

“I think so,” said Linda with unwonted simplicity, 
and Mr. Fourmy took her hand, stooped over it, and 
kissed it. 

Rene looked at his mother, she at him, and Linda, 
turning to Mrs. Fourmy, smiled and said : 

“I am so glad to have come, Mrs. Fourmy. Rene 
and I are such friends. We have such great hopes for 
him and I wanted to see you. Will you take me home, 
Rene?” 

Mr. Fourmy opened the door of the room for her, 
hurried ahead to open the front door, and with a tre- 

93 


YOUNG EARNEST 

mendous dignity, bowed again over Linda’s hand, 
thanked her for coming, and said : 

“May life be good to you, and very amusing.” 

And Linda answered : 

“I’d like to buy your picture, Mr. Fourmy. Will 
you send it to me when it is finished ?” 

“I would rather give it to you.” 

Rene’s horror sent him flying down to the gate. It 
was a minute or two before Linda came. She was smil- 
ing, and Mr. Fourmy had come out on to the door- 
step to watch her walk down. Rene saw his eyes fol- 
low her and appreciate her movements, and he became 
acutely, alarmingly conscious that she also was a 
woman. He was frightened of her as she came up to 
him, but he was also angry, and he let fly: 

“Linda, you can’t.” 

“Can’t what?” 

“You can’t let my father give you his beastly pic- 
ture. You didn’t seem to mind. I thought you would. 
I thought you would. He sits all day doing those 
things over and over again.” 

“Oh, Rene, don’t be silly. I’m older than you.” 

That was the first he had heard of it, and it dashed 
him. That a man should love, could love a woman 
older than himself was in flat contradiction to all his 
notions. He was furious. Linda went on : 

“Two years older. Twenty years older in experi- 
ence and knowledge. You think like a silly little boy.” 

In a rage he turned on his heel and left her. But 
at once a fierce hunger to be with her seized him, to 
clutch her by the arm as he had clutched her before, 

94 


INTIMACY 


and to hurt her more, to feel her soft flesh yielding 
under his grip. That desire was stronger than his fury, 
and he ran after her, and caught her up just at the 
gates of Potter’s Park. 

“I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. I do beg 
your pardon. I can’t help it. I must be with you.” 

And he seized her arm and rushed her ahead for a 
few paces until she cried out at the hurt: 

“Rene! Rene! Quiet! Not now! Wait!” 

She was as excited as he, but not, like him, absorbed 
in her excitement. It was a delight to her. 

He released her, and she led him to a seat opposite 
a bed of Darwin tulips, red and mauve and yellow. He 
sat by her side trembling, drowning in a flood of sav- 
age emotion, thinking not at all. Slowly he became 
aware of the tulips in front of him, and he said : 

“The flowers are very pretty.” 

That relaxed the tension he was in, and he stretched 
out his legs and stared up into the sky, and presently 
he broke into words : 

“And the summer sky is beautiful, but not so beauti- 
ful as you, and I love you.” 

His arms were folded on his chest, and he seemed to 
be hardly conscious of his words Then in a calmer 
voice he said : 

“I never noticed before how the sky is always chang- 
ing and moving and alive. I would like to sit like this 
until it all grows dark and the stars come out and the 
glow of the lights of the town goes up into it? And, 
Linda, it has all become very different, hasn’t it?” 

She said: 


95 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I knew it would come.” 

Then they laughed together, and Rene clapped his 
hand on her knee and told her she was a wonderful 
darling. , 

Linda observed then that they had begun to attract 
attention, and she rose and walked quickly away. He 
followed her slowly, thrilling to the present, seeing 
nothing in the world but her brave little figure in mus- 
lin with the tip-tilted hat. Her hair was golden in the 
sun, and her neck was white and the lines of her shoul- 
ders were lovely. Rene touched her lightly as he came 
up with her. 

“We’re going to be married,” he said. 

“Yes.” 

“Isn’t it fun?” 

Her answer struck him as amusing and he laughed. 
She asked: 

“Is Elsie better in her own house?” 

“Oh, she’s a good sort, really, and George — that’s 
my brother — George couldn’t have done better.” 

“I have an idea from the way you speak that I shall 
rather like George.” 

“I didn’t say anything to show I like him.” 

“No, darling.” (Rene’s heart leaped at the word.) 
“No. I think you dislike him. You hate your father. 
He is impossible, but such a dear.” 

Rene, sensitive in his ecstasy, for the tulips and the 
sky and she had brought him to nothing less, felt a 
malice in her that scratched at his heart. But, loving 
her, worshiping the new radiant intimacy that had 
sprung up between them, he loved even her malice. 

96 


INTIMACY 


They walked home slowly, laughing over the mis- 
chances, the absurdity of the tea-party, and when they 
reached her house she made him come in, played to him 
for an hour, and sent him home drunk with love. He 
called it love, for he suspected not that it could have 
any other name. She had promised to marry him as 
soon as he had his degree and a position, and he was to 
write to her mother and make a formal proposal, since 
Mrs. Brock was old-fashioned enough and German 
enough to desire that much of formal ceremony. 


IX 


PATERFAMILIAS 

The foolish man thereat woxe wondrous blith 
As if the word so spoken were half donne. 

S O far Rene’s success had come from his power to 
do what had been expected of him. He had done 
it without delight or enthusiasm but with the con- 
centration which came from his lack of interest either 
in the past or the future. From the interest of others 
in himself he had been able to borrow a little excite- 
ment every now and then, but he could never sustain it. 
It was not lack of energy, mental or physical, but 
rather that, doing what was expected of him, he did it 
well enough to lead to further expectation, and this 
gave him a constant surprise at himself to keep his 
existence zestful. He was not altogether indifferent, 
but he could accept. He accepted that Linda loved 
him, and was equally prepared to accept that she loved 
him no longer, subject, of course, to any incidental 
pain he might suffer. Believing in everything that 
happened with no power of definition or intellectual 
curiosity, he could never at any given moment realize 
his position without reference to others, and therefore, 
when he found himself embroiled in this tender, dis- 
98 


PATERFAMILIAS 

turbing relationship with Linda Brock, he needed to 
bring it to the test of all his other relationships — with 
his father, his mother, his brother, M’Elroy, Kurt, and 
Professor and Mrs. Smallman. He could not talk 
about it to any of them, but he hoped to find in all some 
appreciation of the new wonder that had come upon 
him, and he desired, for his comfort, to find out what 
in this new development was expected of him. Here 
he was baffled. Everybody was either tactful or in- 
sensible. Things inanimate had changed enormously 
for him. Streets, houses, trees, had taken on a new 
beauty, a friendliness that made room for his emotions ; 
but people lagged distressfully, and he often had an 
unhappy sense of leaving them behind, or, as he talked 
and listened to them, they would dwindle. And yet, 
at the same time, he found them so wonderful that, 
in their failure to respond to his need, they seemed to 
him to be untrue to their own wonder. He knew not 
the nature of his need, but he was left subtly conscious 
of its being left unsatisfied. He ascribed his discomfort 
to his love, and called it “being in love.” It gave him 
an insatiable desire for Linda’s society, presence, con- 
tact ; a harsh sensibility to her beauty ; an appreciation 
of her physical qualities upon which he never dared to 
think, because it led him back in thought to the moment 
of her colloquy with his father when he had felt so 
strangely that he and his mother were not of their 
world. In this distress his mind could find ease in the 
idea of marriage. That settled the future and ap- 
pointed an end to the force that urged him on so mys- 
teriously and powerfully ; but, accustomed as he was to 

99 


YOUNG EARNEST 


living humbly in the present, he needed somehow to 
escape the isolation into which the desire for Linda 
had cast him. He worked harder than he had ever 
done, but when he was not working, and issued from 
the coolness of that limited mental activity, he was 
visited by a craving that not even Linda could slake. 
He found most comfort in children and the idea of 
children. He would go and see Mrs. Smallman, and 
sit with her in the garden and silently watch Martin 
and Bridget playing over the meager lawn under the 
plum-tree. He would talk to Mrs. Smallman about 
indifferent things, and go sick at heart as he saw how 
her eyes and mind were upon the children, how little 
occupied with himself, and how rigidly she kept him 
from that mystery which he desired to comprehend. 
Again he would play with the children with an admir- 
able success, so that they would admit him as one of 
themselves, only as he emerged from the game to be 
met with an applauding smile from the charming lady, 
which made him feel that she admired his perform- 
ance but could not herself admit him. She was 
friendly and amiable, and would ask him to come 
again; and he would hear from Linda how well Mrs. 
Smallman thought of him — “Such a nice boy, and so 
fond of children” — but she kept him separate. He 
tried once or twice to tell Mrs. Smallman about Linda. 

“She is such a clever girl,” she would say. “A good 
musician, of course. My husband says she could take 
a first easily in almost any subject. I am sure she will 
make a good wife, just the kind of girl to make a man 
successful. We have often been surprised that she 


ioo 


PATERFAMILIAS 


has not married before, but of course she is a girl who 
could only live happily with a good brain. It does 
make such a difference.” 

Everything she said led back to her own bliss and 
exceptional fortune; and while Rene gave her due 
homage for her motherhood, her wifedom, her gra- 
cious happy home, yet he came almost to hate these 
things without knowing that it was because they were 
securely barred in. Yet he could not keep away nor 
refrain from his attempts to storm the citadel. 

He would try through Smallman, who was even 
more exasperating. He seemed to divine that his pupil 
was groping after some reassurance of human beauty, 
but he would hint darkly at the difficulties of married 
life, generalize about the simplicity of human needs, 
whisper of the revelation of fatherhood, and, just as 
he had Rene sitting forward in excited anticipation of 
the longed-for marvel, he would double and turn aside 
into the discussion of economic problems, or the un- 
satisfactory nature of the academic life in Thrigsby. 
And then, with the children, Rene would see that 
Smallman could never enter into their games or their 
minds as thoroughly as himself. 

On the whole he preferred George’s gross swagger- 
ing over his paternity, and there was a sure satisfaction 
in watching his sister-in-law suckle her baby. But 
there again George and his wife took upon themselves 
an excessive credit for the achievement, hoarded it, in- 
vested it in everybody whom they could get to take it, 
seeming to use the child as a means of gaining admira- 
tion for themselves. They seemed to be incapable of 
IOI 


YOUNG EARNEST 


recovering from the astonishment of anything so nat- 
ural happening to themselves, and they too, a little 
more exuberantly and less charmingly, barred Rene 
out. 

“By Jove!” George would say, “there is nothing like 
it. It’s wonderful what you can do without when 
you’ve got that. And, as I was saying to Elsie, I can’t 
make out what swells do who have a nurse. I can’t 
tell you how jolly glad I was when the monthly went 
and we could have it all to ourselves.” 

To Rene George was so horrible when he talked so, 
that he would forget the sentimental satisfaction he 
had had in the contemplation of the change wrought 
in the household by the advent of his nephew. 

“And imagine,” George said once, “that one never 
thinks of it. You get making love and all that. Just 
a bit o’ fun, as likely as not, and it leads to this. By 
God, it’s a big thing. Hark at the little beggar. I tell 
you, Rene, my heart sometimes stops with fright when 
a long time goes by and he doesn’t howl. Oh, well, 
your day will come. It’ll come, all right. Don’t you 
worry!” 

In desperation Rene led the conversation elsewhere. 

And at home things were hardly better. He felt 
that his mother did not like Linda, though she showed 
no reluctance to talk of her, or indeed to praise her. 
Perhaps Linda had frightened her. And sometimes 
Rene would feel that his mother had a real horror of 
love and marriage and all but the most superficial and 
sentimental relations of the sexes. He would wonder 
how that could be reconciled with her reception of his 


102 


PATERFAMILIAS 


father or her excited business before the coming of 
Elsie’s baby. She was often disconcertingly silent 
when he came home from some employment with 
Linda, and he learned that he must not tell her what 
he had been doing. 

Sometimes she would begin of her own accord to 
talk of Linda : 

“She has such eyes. She sees everything. You feel 
she knows every stitch of clothing you have on. And 
the things she wears herself — Well! But she’s very 
pleasant and she’s got a pretty smile. Girls were very 
different in my day.” 

“How were they different?” Rene would ask. 

“I don’t know. Different. I can’t say. We were 
more patient. There were some things we didn’t talk 
of. But, of course, she’s not English. That would 
account for a good deal. If you weren’t so set on her 
I should say she was making a fool of herself. Girls 
often do, you know, with a sort of man they’ve not 
been used to. But I will say this for you, Rene, you’re 
not one not to take a girl seriously.” 

Rene looked puzzled. His mother laughed. 

“Go on, you great gaby; don’t tell me you don’t 
know what you can do with those eyes of yours.” 

This annoyed him with its suggestion of a deliberate 
manipulation on his part of the springs of affection. 

“Oh, mother,” he said, “you’ve been so different 
since my father came back, and I’m different, and 
everything seems to be changing so swiftly that it is 
hard to tell — hard to tell where we are. We seem so 
far away from the old life, just you and I together.” 

103 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Mrs. Fourmy looked at him and replied : 

“You remind me of the times when you were a little 
boy and used to sit with an ashen face, very thin, with 
the tears rolling down your cheeks. And when I asked 
you what was the matter you used to say : 'I’m heavy/ 
You weren’t like an ordinary boy. You seemed to feel 
things.” 

“I seem to feel things now,” he said miserably; 
“but I don’t know what things they are.” Then, en- 
couraged by the warm interest he felt in her, he added : 
“But I can’t want not to feel.” And, daring a stroke 
against the new baleful influence at work in the house, 
he told her of his recollection of the scene in the bed- 
room when she had spanked his father. 

“Well now,” she said, “to think of your remember- 
ing that.” 

“It made all the difference,” said he, “all the differ- 
ence in the world.” 

“Oh, you poor mite,” cried his mother; “and you 
couldn’t see it was in fun?” 

“Fun !” He looked incredulous. 

“Yes. We were very happy then.” 

He pounced eagerly on that. 

“Happy? Were you happy? And now? And 
now ?” 

That was coming to closer quarters than she had 
courage for. She sank into indifference. 

“We’re old now,” she said, and he felt that she too 
had barred him out. She also may have felt it, for 
she shifted uncomfortably and led the talk away from 
herself and presently to praise of his father. 

104 


PATERFAMILIAS 


“He was too clever,” she said, “and I couldn’t see 
how clever he was. I wanted him to beat his brothers 
in their own line, and I wanted him to love you two 
boys in my way instead of his. Of course I’m not 
clever, Rene, and I can’t say where things got wrong. 
It’s wonderful how he’s settled down now. I never 
thought he would. And I want you to be nice to him, 
Rene, for my sake. Even if you’re not going to be 
here much longer, I would like you to do that. He 
feels his position so.” 

The sting of indignation pricked Rene into brutality. 
He had made his effort to reclaim his mother from his 
father, and failed. He cried : 

“What did he do?” 

“What do men do when dullness creeps over them 
and they are mortified with failure?” 

There was a note of vengeance in her tone, exas- 
peration perhaps, a savage determination to set abomi- 
nations before the fatuous innocence of her son. She 
succeeded. He was beset with horrors and a sick 
repulsion from his mother who could allow, accept, 
and seem to rejoice in such contamination. 

Drearily he said : 

“He’s a dirty man,” and upon that expression of 
opinion he left her. 

However he did attempt to be more amiable with his 
father, and even went so far as to accompany him to 
the Denmark of an evening, and was there astonished 
to find how the old fellow by sheer wit and masterful 
presence lorded it over the company of clerks, shop- 
105 


YOUNG EARNEST 


keepers, theater musicians, agents, brokers, bagmen, 
school teachers, the odd characters, the small talents of 
the neighborhood. Rene noticed that Mr. Sherman 
plied his father with drink to keep him lively, and that 
there seemed no question of payment for it. Mr. 
Fourmy paid in talk, yarns, jests, jokes, impromptu 
fantasies, with sly hits at the eccentrics of the assembly. 
And although Rene hated the atmosphere, the smoke, 
the drink, the greedy lapping up of gross laughter, the 
pouncing on scraps of filth and equivocal utterances, he 
could not escape some admiration of his father. This 
grew as they left the place and Mr. Fourmy shook off 
his air of large geniality and took his son by the arm 
and asked if they might go for a walk together. 

“To think,” he said, “of your remembering a thing 
like that. And it did make a change too. You used to 
come running down the road to meet me when I came 
back from town. You stopped doing that. I noticed 
it once or twice, and then I gave no more heed to it. 
I never was much of a one to give heed to things. 
Can’t stand things dull. Never could. I couldn’t do 
what you’re doing now, plodding away with those fat 
books of yours. It seems wonderful to me. I looked 
into one of them the other day. No. I never had the 
mind for it.” 

“Father,” said Rene solemnly, “when I was born, 
what did you feel like?” 

“Lord love a duck! What a question! I’d been 
expecting it, you know. And George was there, you 
know. But I’ll tell you this, my lad. A child’s won- 
derfully separate at once, and no amount of clucking 
io 6 


PATERFAMILIAS 


will ever make it anything else. It’s got its own sepa- 
rate life like the rest of us. We’re all separate, and it’s 
just as well not to forget it. We’re never allowed to 
forget it for long. I forgot it. I thought we were a 
nice little happy family with no individuals in it at 
all — except myself. And then ” 

“What then?” 

“Then, my son, there was a nasty mess.” 

“Oh!” 

“There always is a nasty mess. Marriage knocks a 
man to pieces and leaves him to put himself together 
again. Women are more brutal. They don’t mind if 
marriage turns out to be no more than a pool of mud. 
Lord, Lord! a woman will bear a child almost every 
year of her bearing life and be no more than a little 
girl at the end of it, a prying, stealthy-minded little 
girl.” 

Rene was enraged and shocked, but excited too, in- 
tellectually. He turned to his father and said: 

“Father, I want to know, I must know, how you 
could come back to my mother.” 

“That,” said Mr. Fourmy, “is what I am still asking 
myself.” 

Rene swung round and struck his father full on the 
mouth, thrilled sickeningly to the impact and raised his 
hand to strike again. Mr. Fourmy caught him by the 
wrist and dragged him up so that their faces were close 
together, both breathing heavily: 

“Steady,” whispered the older man, “steady ! steady 
on, boy. It’s the women bitching at you got into your 
blood. You’re a good boy, a virtuous boy. Things 
107 


/ 


YOUNG EARNEST 

are hard for virtue. Listen to me. Do you hear?” 
Rene nodded. “Very well then. Life’s a damn dirty 
business, and it grows damneder and damneder as time 
goes on. It got so damned for me that I cleared out. 
See?” Rene nodded. “I cleared out till I could see 
that it was damn funny. Then I came back. It was 
grinding me as it is grinding you.”* 

He patted his son’s arm so affectionately that Rene 
choked and the tears ran down his cheeks. 

They walked on, Rene lurching, until his father took 
his arm again and led him. There was a moon over 
them, and as he led, Mr. Fourmy said : 

“On a night like this even Thrigsby is beautiful. 
Lord! How I used to hate the place. But when I 
had seen things I came to know that it is like any 
other. There are good men in it and good things, and 
over all the same slime of meanness and fear that only 
very few can penetrate. We live in a world of women, 
boy, and we must make the best of it.” 

Rene hardly heard him, but he could feel the pres- 
sure of his hand and was glad that here, at last, was 
one nature that did not bar him out. It was so aston- 
ishing as to be repellent, but he was so hungry for 
comfort that he could not withdraw. 


X 


HONEYMOON 

That God forbid that made me first your slave 
I should in thought control your times of pleasure. 

A/TRS. BROCK granted Rene an interview. From 
the worldly standpoint it was satisfactory. No 
great objection to the projected alliance was made, and 
he learned that Linda had a fortune of her own which 
provided her with an income of seven hundred a 
year. If anything, he was distressed by the informa- 
tion. He did not regard money as in itself desirable. 
The lack of it was a nuisance to be avoided if possible, 
but not otherwise to be considered. The past year had 
led him to believe that such a lack was easily repaired. 
It was disturbing to the few ideas he had on the sub- 
ject to think that he would not be able to satisfy any 
desires in his beloved which she could not herself sup- 
ply. However that did not occupy him long, for he 
was comforted by Mrs. Brock’s explaining that she had 
discussed the matter with her daughter — a good, sensi- 
ble maiden, who admitted that there was a practical 
side even to romance — and they had agreed to postpone 
the marriage until Mr. Fourmy was settled in a pro- 
fession. To make this easier, Linda had consented to 
109 


YOUNG EARNEST 


go to her relatives in Hamburg for an indefinite period, 
though, of course, she would go there as a betrothed. 

He said: 

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Brock.” 

He tried to say more, to remove the affair from the 
hard, business footing on which it had been conducted, 
to lead his prospective mother-in-law to give him some 
sign that she regarded him as a potential member of 
her family, but she suppressed him by saying: 

“Frankly, Mr. Fourmy, I don’t think it would be 
wise of you to marry with my daughter unless you 
have at least three hundred a year.” 

He agreed and withdrew, chilled at the heart. It 
seemed to end his wooing and to give him already a 
slight distaste for Linda. Could she really have dis- 
cussed the matter so coolly with her solid mother? 
It was a shock to him that women from whom came 
such great ecstasy were not themselves all compact of 
that fiery essence. And seven hundred a year ! That 
seemed more present to the mind of the mother than 
the girl herself. Seven hundred a year was to be sent 
to Germany until he had grown into three hundred a 
year. 

However, Linda immensely enjoyed the process of 
parting. She began it on the Sunday, and carried it 
through till the Friday, when she was to sail from 
Hull, and she left her betrothed, sad, aching, but obsti- 
nately hopeful. On the Tuesday she said : 

“You have changed my whole life. I was drifting. 
I was trying to take in too many things. You have 
made me see.” 


no 


HONEYMOON 


“What?” asked Rene very seriously. He was 
anxious to know. 

“Just see,” she replied. 

He was left uncomfortably in his own limited world, 
feeling that she had shot off into regions to which he 
could not follow her. He ought to have been accus- 
tomed to that by now, but he could not be. She was 
always hinting at the wonderful things she got out of 
him, but as he was never conscious of them, he could 
not understand her. He used to tell himself that it 
was her queer roundabout way of delighting in her 
love for him. 

On the Thursday she said: 

“You know, Rene, at such a distance we shall be 
able to get our ideas of each other clear. That is so 
necessary. We must make an effort to understand 
each other.” 

“Isn’t it enough if we love each other?” 

“Oh no. That only means making allowances. It 
isn’t enough to do that. I get frightened sometimes 
when I think of all the people who are married, how 
little they understand each other.” 

“Then they’re married without loving each other.” 

“I think I see what you mean,” and she caught his 
hand and pressed it to her bosom. She had become 
much more demonstrative in these days of parting. He 
warmed to her excitement and rushed ahead : 

“People who love each other are married. I’ve 
been thinking about it. If people love each other they 
have the wonderful mutual knowledge which is mar- 
riage. And we have that, haven’t w r e?” 


hi 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Oh, wonderfully !” 

On the Friday she wept and would not be consoled 
until he had consented to go to Hull with her. He had 
an engagement for the day, but telegraphed to cancel it 
and went with her. She clung to him on the boat, and 
caused him almost to be carried away from the pier. 
The gangway had to be put out for him, and he 
raced ashore and stood on the quay waving a pocket- 
handkerchief and swallowing his tears until the boat 
had dipped over the edge of the sea. 

They wrote to each other, every day at first, then 
every other day. Her letters in their coolness often 
stabbed him, but he could not bring his into tone with 
hers. He poured out everything he thought and felt 
without calculation, and with no literary pleasure or 
excitement. She was only led into warm confession 
when some phrase lured her on. Her greatest enthusi- 
asm was when, at the end of the Academic year, he 
sent her the examination lists with his name at the 
head, and also as having won the Robert Owen prize 
and a studentship of eighty pounds a year for three 
years. 

Indeed his university career ended in a blaze of 
glory. Professor Smallman sent for him and assured 
him that on his papers he was an absolutely first-class 
man, and the university could not afford to lose him. 
Of course there was no vacancy as yet, and the teach- 
ing of economics was a miserably-paid profession, but 
in the meanwhile he could procure a supernumerary 
post on the staff of the Grammar School which would 


II 2 


HONEYMOON 


leave him free to take up any appointment that cropped 
up. He could also continue his reviewing, unless he 
thought of going on to Oxford or Cambridge, when, 
of course, the school and the university would help 
him. For a career, a degree at one of the major uni- 
versities was almost essential. 

“I don’t mind telling you,” said the Professor, “that 
it is pretty much my own career over again, though 
there are things you can do that I never could. You’ve 
more imagination. Cambridge economics are very 
much alive just now. If you would care to ” 

“I must make an income,” said Rene. He was 
elated, but also disgruntled, suffering from a reaction. 
He had prepared his subject for the examination, and 
having succeeded, had lost interest in it. Vaguely he 
had so arranged his life that until this examination he 
would do as he was told to do, so that after it he 
might do things because he wanted to do them. On 
the whole, he rather resented the Professor’s continued 
interference in his affairs. However, he agreed with 
the first plan. Cambridge meant another three years 
preparing for another examination, and he was Thrigs- 
beian enough to feel that it was not a “man’s work.” 

He saw the Headmaster on the morning of Speech 
day, and was warmly thanked for the honor he had 
brought to the school, and was engaged to appear on 
the first day of the following term. Desiring to see his 
old form-master, Mr. Beenham, he went to his room 
and was surprised to find his desk empty and the boys 
playing cricket with a German Grammar and a ball of 
paper tied with string. As he left the school he asked 
113 


YOUNG EARNEST 

the porter after Mr. Beenham, and the porter told him 
that story. It upset him. Of all human beings he had 
regarded Old Mole as the least human, but now he was 
desiring to exercise his released intelligence, his power 
of penetration, his imagination upon the surrounding 
world. All his faculties had been concentrated upon 
economics as a means to an end, the life which lay be- 
yond examinations. Professor Smallman and the 
Headmaster had made him feel that the life beyond 
was distressingly like the life before, and now this 
disaster to Old Mole came as some small assurance 
that there were adventures though they might be 
never so foolish. The Professor had mildly alarmed 
his pupil by pointing out the similarity of their careers. 
Admire Smallman as he might, it was not that to 
which Rene wished to come. It was not that he had 
any excitement in contemplating the future. On the 
contrary: the present was too absorbing. Everybody 
was charming to him, seemed to be proud of him; the 
rich Fourmys had asked him to their houses — and he 
had refused. He found himself being listened to, 
respected, given the right to have views and opinions. 
He had neither, and was too honest to evolve them 
for the occasion. And when the future insisted upon 
engaging his attention, he filled it with Linda and was 
happy. 

He refused to go to Scotland, half despising his 
memories of it. 

He was happy, simply engrossed in his own com- 
fortable sensations. He had set out to do a thing and 
done it well, better even than he or anyone else had 
1 14 


HONEYMOON 


anticipated ; he was in love and engaged to be married 
upon the condition of making three hundred a year. 
His success had made that easily possible ; his student- 
ship, one hundred and fifty from the school, more 
from the Post , possible examination papers, lectures; 
his hardly-won book knowledge had been shaped by 
his reputation into a marketable commodity. 

But his real happiness lay apart from all these 
things, from success, from love, from the easy com- 
merce of his abilities. Relieved from the strain and 
obsession of his examination, he had discovered the 
wonderful pleasure to be got from the mere act of 
living, from seeing the world freshly every morning, 
from passing through the day and feeling it slip away 
from him without his having to demand of it any 
definite profit in knowledge or money ea'rned. It was 
a new delight with him just to watch people, a joy 
that had remained with him from his outburst by the 
tulips, to sit and gaze at flowers, trees, the sky, water. 
He had times of feeling wonderfully remote, when 
the habits on which he won through the day seemed 
ridiculous, though trivially pleasurable. In this mood 
he would sometimes realize with a start that it was 
now his father and he who were companions, his 
mother who was the stranger. And he would bring 
himself up on that and tell himself that his mother 
had his love and championship if any were needed. 
But he would rejoice in his father’s gusto in eating, 
drinking, smoking, painting, talking, all that the queer 
man did. Against that too he would react and tell 
himself that his father was futile. But was not his 


YOUNG EARNEST 

mother futile also? And was not futility with gusto 
the better of the two? 

He was too happy for the business of weighing up 
between his father and his mother, too absorbed in the 
glowing introspection to which he had been brought; 
introspection without analysis; a brooding, almost a 
floating over faculties in himself faintly stirring, 
reaching out to exercise themselves on everything 
within his reach. The world was very wonderful : its 
possibilities were endless; its treasures lay immeasur- 
able only for the stretching out of his hand ; and it was 
a delicious pleasure to him not to stretch out his hand, 
but to know that one day he need but make a gesture 
to have all its marvels pouring in on him. That those 
older than himself had but a small share of them dis- 
turbed him not at all. He had no doubt but his would 
be the infallible gesture, and, without conceit, during 
this happy time, he cherished a firm belief in his 
unique quality. 

All his new delights were expressed in his letters to 
Linda in Germany. She analyzed them for him, not 
always accurately, but the mental process was new and 
exciting to him, and he began to appreciate her intel- 
lectual activity. They discussed his character at great 
length. He said: “I suppose I am, or have been — 
for I often find myself wanting to laugh nowadays — 
too serious.” She replied : “Not too serious, my dear. 
It is impossible to be that in this heartless age. (Oh! 
What a lot you can learn about England by going 
abroad!) Not too serious. No. What you lack, I 
think, is power of observation. What you must realize 
116 


HONEYMOON 


is that things have a surface and a surface value. Of 
course you cannot be content with that value, but you 
must not expect surface things to have any value in 
the region of profound things, the region in which, 
poor dear, you have always lived.” Faithfully he set 
about cultivating surface values, but he never could 
laugh at things that were just amusing; he never could 
laugh unless he were moved to laughter. He was, for 
instance, baffled and made sorry by the family jests 
which left George and Elsie exhausted by their noisy 
mirth. 

Kurt Brock persuaded him to go with him for a tour 
in a side-car attached to his motor-cycle. Then did 
Rene become swollen and puffed up with 'the glory of 
the world. The exuberant boy was a tonic in himself ; 
the speed he maintained was intoxicating; and they 
burst out of the long suburbs of Thrigsby into the 
Cheshire plain, over to the sea, the Welsh mountains, 
down the Severn and Wye valleys. To Rene, whose 
existence for so many years had lain only in Thrigsby 
and the little Scots village, it was being shot out into 
life. The return to Thrigsby made him miserable. 
Also association with Kurt had pricked the small bub- 
ble of his vanity. Kurt, so hopeless with books, was 
amazingly efficient with his machine, equal to every 
emergency, daring, inexhaustible, masterful. He had 
said many things which Rene had found disturbing 
and alarming. The boy had everything so cut and 
dried; no room in his life, it seemed, for folly, cer- 
tainly none for brooding. He confessed one night, as 

ii 7 


YOUNG EARNEST 


they sat sleepily in a public-house parlor, that he 
wanted to be an airman. Rene could not applaud the 
ambition. 

“Hardly fair to your mother, or, suppose you were 
in love, to — well.” 

“People talk a lot of bally rot about love. They 
seem to think it means bagging a woman like a rabbit 
and shutting her up in a hutch to breed.” 

“Well,” said Rene, “marriage does mean living to- 
gether and a certain amount of responsibility.” 

“I dunno. I’ve never been in love, but I’m not 
going to either, unless I get something that goes off 
with a bang and lets me and her get on a bit.” His 
mania was for getting on. When Rene wanted lunch, 
Kurt would hold out for another place “only twenty 
miles on.” 

Another night Rene returned to the subject of 
women and love, Kurt’s audacities having a horrid 
fascination for him, and the boy said: 

“I dunno, but if a woman said she loved me and 
wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do because she 
said she loved me, I should know she was a liar.” 

Rene tried to point out that life and love were not 
so simple as all that, but there was no turning Kurt. 
He had the thing worked out neatly to his own satis- 
faction, and he was not going to bother his head about 
it any more. 

“Bad enough,” he said, “to have a legal speed limit 
without having a private limit in the home.” 

A letter from Linda reached Rene at one of their 
stopping-places. She declared herself terrified at the 
118 


HONEYMOON 


thought of his being with her brother. "Do keep him 
from going more than thirty miles an hour.” 

At once Rene was on her side against Kurt and 
exasperated him by asking perpetually: "What are 
we doing now?” To which Kurt invariably replied: 
"Damn near fifty. ,, 

The tour ended in a river in Derbyshire. Kurt took 
a curly wooden bridge at thirty miles an hour, carried 
away the railing, and plunged Rene and machine into 
six feet of water. Kurt could not swim, and Rene 
hauled him out and screamed at him: 

"You deserve to be killed! You deserve to be 
killed! Taking the bridge like that.” 

Kurt grinned : 

"You don’t know how funny you looked in the 
bath-chair toppling over. What a smash! What 
idiots to have a bridge like that. It’s no good for 
anything except a push-bike. I’ll get a car if the 
insurance people stump up.” 

Rene was really shocked at his callousness, and as 
they sat in blankets while their clothes were being 
dried, he took him to task, delivered himself of a 
pedagogic exhortation and ended by saying: 

"Kurt! Kurt! I believe you have no feeling!” 

"Nerves! What’s the good of them anyway? But 
I’m jolly grateful to you for pulling me out. I must 
learn to swim. It might be jolly awkward if I tried to 
fly to America. Wouldn’t it be grand if I was the 
first man to do it?” 

Something in the boy’s tone thrilled Rene and he 
felt a pang, a sudden, painful knowledge that he loved 
119 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Kurt, and, when he was left alone, Kurt’s clothes hav- 
ing dried first, he was faintly uneasy, half wondering, 
yet not admitting the doubt to himself, whether he 
had really loved anybody else. Then he told himself 
that it was only because Kurt had treated him with his 
boy’s frankness, and because he had not with anybody 
else been brought face to face with anything so terri- 
ble as death. And then he found himself in a brief 
dream asking if life also was not terrible, and love? 

And if ? But such thoughts he refused to think. 

Into his brooding happiness had come a new zest, and 
he would not waste one moment of it upon doubt, 
philosophic or particular. 

They returned to Thrigsby by train, and Rene found 
himself committed to a lie .about the accident. If the 
truth came out, said Kurt, his mother would not allow 
him to have that car. 

What was there in common, thought Rene, between 
Linda and Kurt? She had not his frankness. (He 
was frank even in his lying.) She was subtle, given 
to theory. Her brother had, cut and dried, not so 
much a theory as a program. With Kurt Rene had 
had a robust pleasure which he had never enjoyed 
with Linda, and it was so far above all other pleasures 
that he took it for the goal to aim at, the prize to be 
won, when he should have broken down the barrier 
of sex and overcome her taste for teasing, and put 
an end to all those irritations which he ascribed to 
their ridiculous position as engaged persons, irritations 
that even in her letters pricked and stung him. He 


120 


HONEYMOON 


was slow to come by a thought, and when he possessed 
one always insisted upon its relevance to existence, 
while she seemed most to revel in ideas when they 
were most irrelevant. In their correspondence, her 
letters grew longer as the months passed. (After his 
success she had assumed “intellect” in him.) His let- 
ters became more precise and brief. He had no doubt 
of her. She had taken the place of the examination 
as the next stage in being, beyond which would lie, 
to borrow her phrase, the “real, real life.” 

So eagerly did he look forward to that illumination 
that things and people had lost their interest for him. 
The question of income was settled; the problem of 
his father and mother engaged him no more. They 
had suddenly become old to him, settled, left to grope 
along with their own affairs and difficulties. This 
made life at 166 easier. He had stood between his 
father and mother, and had now removed himself. 
His mother was more free in her chatter, his father 
less strained and more jovial in his talk. Rene had 
told them of his engagement and of Linda’s wealth, 
and this, coupled with his success, had made them 
acquiesce in his translation to a superior sphere and 
even take some pride in it. For a short while he had 
qualms on seeing his mother let him go so lightly, but 
he faced the fact and did not let it obtrude upon his 
dreams of graciousness and freedom. 

All these events had delivered him for the first en- 
joyment of his youth, and his thoughts were like bees 
in a flowering lime-tree. They were disturbed by noth- 
ing but Linda’s letters. The more she teased and 


121 


YOUNG EARNEST 


flattered his “intellect,” the more he dwelt upon the 
future when the teasing and the flattery would have 
ceased, and his warm satisfaction would be invigorated 
by the zestful sharing of married, life. He made 
no plans and hardly considered those she threw out. 
She had ambitions for him. They were too fantastic 
to be noticed. 

A silence of three weeks alarmed him. She broke 
it with the announcement of her return, and the ex- 
pression of her desire to be married at once, and a 
request that he would meet her in London, for she 
was crossing by Flushing. 

It was early spring. He obtained a day’s leave of 
absence from school, and met her at Fenchurch Street. 
He saw no more of London than was to be seen as a 
background to her profile as they drove to Euston. 
She was different from the image he had formed of 
her during her absence, smaller, even prettier, more 
vivacious and effective. They kissed when they met, 
rather to his astonishment, for he had not the least 
desire to kiss her but only to consider her. She began 
to talk at once : 

“It has done wonders for you. You look so much 
more confident and bigger. Your success I mean. 
And you really are distinguished-looking. How do 
you like your work?” 

“I do it without No, I haven’t thought about 

it.” 

“I wanted them to take you into the business — 
Brock and M’ Elroy, you know. But old Mr. M’ Elroy 


122 


HONEYMOON 


wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted me to marry Jack 
M’Elroy. Perhaps I should have done it if I hadn’t 
met you.” 

That did not please him at all, though it was obvi- 
ously intended to do so. She went on : 

“But we’ll show them that we can do better on our 
own lines, won’t we? Father used to say that com- 
merce was sordid however honest you tried to be, and 
after all, it isn’t work for a first-rate man, is it?” 

Her insistence on his success and abilities worried 
him. It was not for this he had been waiting. He 
wanted her to tell him what had brought her to her 
abrupt decision to be married sooner than they had 
planned. He tried to lead her on to that but could 
bring her to no other intimacy than that of little ca- 
resses with her hands. He would not admit his dis- 
appointment, and all through the four hours’ journey 
kept on telling himself that he was glad to see her. 
And indeed he was glad. Her coming brought the 
promised future nearer. 

She gave him no time to ponder his disappointment 
or the hole it knocked in his brooding pleasure. They 
chose a house, fifty pounds a year, with a garden, in 
Galt’s Park. He took his mother to see it, and she 
assumed the manner she had had in the old days for 
the visits of the “rich Fourmys.” 

A fortnight’s shopping furnished the house, and he 
had the satisfaction of supplying the furniture for his 
study out of a check sent by his Aunt Janet. The 
trousseau took another three weeks, and Mrs. Brock, 


123 


YOUNG EARNEST 


with an eye to wedding presents, would not hear of the 
day being fixed until after an interval of six weeks. A 
miserable time. Linda seemed to think of everything 
but her bridegroom. 

For the honeymoon the Yorkshire coast was chosen, 
by whom it was not very clear. Rene had wanted 
Derbyshire; Linda had proposed the Lakes, but, a 
fortnight before the marriage, Mrs. Smallman had 
appeared on the scene and taken charge, instructed 

them, tactfully and almost tacitly, in the correct de- 
portment of those about to be married. She kept the 
couple apart, spent days and evenings with Linda, and 
made her keep Rene distracted. The Smallmans had 
spent their honeymoon on the Yorkshire coast; they 
knew of a charming little private hotel overlooking 
Ravenscar; theirs had been the perfect honeymoon, 
one which had never come to an end. So might — 
must — it be with Rene’s; and so it would be if good- 
will, advice, kindly glances, friendly instruction, could 
bring it about. The Professor expanded: 

“It is wonderful when all that you have loved in a 
dream, as it were, materializes and is there in your 
hands. Only you feel so confoundedly unworthy. And 

then, when you are married and settled down, you get 
so abominably accustomed to it. No one could be 
more devoted than my wife and I, but we find that if 
we do not keep ourselves alive with outside interests, 
we begin to wear each other down. It isn’t easy — 
marriage. I can say all this now, because if I don’t I 
never shall. And, after all, you know, I like you, 
Fourmy. We shall work together and be good friends, 

124 


HONEYMOON 


but we lose something, you know. A certain kind of 
intimacy we can never have again.” 

This talk reminded Rene of the occasion when 
George had taken him as a small boy to the swimming 
baths, made him stand on the edge practicing strokes, 
and then pushed him into the deep end. 

The night before his departure, his mother came 
into his room and sat on his bed and looked long at 
him : 

“I can’t bear to think of your bed empty to-mor- 
row,” she said. 

“Better send it to the new house,” replied he. 

“I can hardly realize that you are a man and going 
to have a wife. It seems only the other day that you 
were a little boy, learning to cook in the kitchen. Do 
you remember? And now I suppose you’ll have late 
dinner. It is queer. I used to be able to think of you 
as a boy at school, but I can never imagine you as a 
teacher, in a gown, too. And it’s even harder to think 
of you ” 

“You shall come and stay with us.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t!” She looked toward the door. 

“You could come without father.” 

“Don’t be hard on your father, Rene.” 

“No. That’s all over.” 

“I’m so glad.” 

She stooped over him and kissed him. Then she 
took his head in her hands and pressed her cheek 
against his, and on his forehead he felt her warm tears. 
She murmured : 


125 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“I’ve always tried to do my best.” 

Then she left him, and he felt the tears rising to his 
own eyes, and he lay in worship of the beautiful kind- 
ness of women. They seemed to hold in fee so much 
of life’s loveliness, to be able to open to a man fair 
regions that else were hidden to him all his days. He 
was eager for the morrow’s adventure. 

The wedding made him feel that it was not by his 
own will that he was being married, but that in some 
fantastic way he had been brought to it by Mrs. Brock 
and the Smallmans and, incongruously, by his father 
and George, and was doing it to oblige them. The 
collective will of several persons was using him and 
Linda as pawns in an aimless game. 

The ceremony took place in a very ugly Lutheran 
chapel, and the recited words had no meaning for his 
bewildered mind. George and Elsie — whom he re- 
membered in the middle of it — had had a reason for 
their marriage. His own seemed purposeless — No. 
Did it not open up to him an unending tenderness like 
that given him by his mother last night? He stole a 
glance at Linda. She was all pride and blushes, rather 
breathlessly intent upon the ceremony, which seemed 
to have some emotional significance for her. 

They had two rooms reserved for them in the little 
hotel. They avoided them, and preferred to be out of 
doors. They took food with them to escape dinner 
before the other visitors and walked the three miles 
to the top of Ravenscar. There they sat in the heather 
126 


HONEYMOON 


and gazed out seaward in silence. On the way they 
had talked little, except to comment on the broken 
sky, the color in the moors, the still shining sea, gray 
and green. They sat in silence, and he felt utterly 
alone, cut off from his old life with no new life begun. 
And almost angrily he thrust away the idea of the 
woman sitting there by his side. So charming she had 
been in the glamour of the future, so irrelevant she 
seemed now that he was thrust away with her to find 
or fail to find in her a life to replace that which had 
slipped away from him. He had prized that old life 
so little while it was his, but it had been familiar, his 
habitual garment. It had been fashioned with his 
growth. She had been outside it; that had been her 
fascination. But he was stripped of it, and he had 
nothing wherewith to approach her. And suddenly he 
saw that he was failing her, that such thoughts were a 
betrayal of her trust in him. After all, she too had 
shed her old life. He was fearful lest she should be- 
come aware of his treachery. He said : 

“When I was away with Kurt ” And at once 

he knew that he had made a false move. The thought 
of Kurt filled him with the memory of the free joy he 
had had on that excursion, and he could not but con- 
trast it with the mean and sickly hesitation of this. 
What was it? What was he afraid of? Afraid of 
the woman ? Oh, come ! Did he not love her and she 
him ? What was there to dread in love ? 

She said: 

“Oh, Rene, we didn’t come away to talk of Kurt.” 
“No.” 


127 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“We didn’t come away to talk.” 

“No.” 

She came close to his side. 

“Rene, kiss me. Say you love me.” 

“I love you.” 

But it was better to sit in silence and gaze out at the 
sea, gray and green. 

She clung to him, caressed him, used absurd little 
phrases, English and German. 

“I loved you,” she said, “from the first moment 
when you came into the Smallmans’ drawing-room. I 
was wearing green. Do you remember?” 

“Green. Yes. I remember. I saw your parasol in 
the hall.” 

“And you loved me from the moment when you 
saw my parasol.” 

She laughed. That was better. It broke the heavy 
brooding in him that had brought him to such 
suspense. 

The evening air chilled them, and they walked home . 
under the stars. She clung to him and sang ditties of 
love and trysts and sentimental disasters. When they 
reached their sitting-room she came to him and placed 
her hand under his chin, pressed his lips with her 
forefinger, and then kissed him. Then she left him. 

In the early hours of the morning he was out on 
the seashore, wandering aimlessly, nervously, deject- 
edly. Every now and then he threw up his head and 
took in a great draught of the keen morning air blow- 
ing in from the sea. That invigorated, cleansed him. 

128 


HONEYMOON 


Suddenly he crouched on the sands and hid his face 
in his hands, and cried within himself : 

“I can’t go on. I can’t go back. Oh, Love, my 
love.” 

He had counted on her to open up new wonders and 
sweet joys, and together they had attained nothing 
but heat and hunger and distress. 


XI 


MATRIMONY 

Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, 

An’ let poor damned bodies be: 

I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie 
Ev’n to a deil 

To skelp and scaud poor dogs like me 
An’ hear us squeal. 

H E returned to her. She was in dressing-gown, 
fresh, indolent, gay. She held out her hand 

to him. 

“What a strange man you are ! Couldn’t you 
sleep?” 

“No. I couldn’t sleep. 

“Poor old thing. I slept wonderfully.” 

Had she felt nothing? Had she no suspicion of the 
agony that had driven him from her side ? Of the sick 
hope of comfort and reassurance that had brought him 
back to her ? A faint shadow of fear had crossed her 
face on his entrance, but it had vanished when he 
spoke. 

Indeed he was reassured. Her gaiety and charm 
disarmed him. The sun came streaming through the 
window upon her hair; her eyes danced; she glowed 
130 


MATRIMONY 


in her health and physical well-being. He had no other 
creature to whom to turn. Under the spell of her 
radiance he appealed to her, who had wounded him, to 
repair the hurt. She petted him, made much of him, 
denied him the relief of activity, and had him to sit 
with her in the heather with his head in her lap while 
she crooned to him of how happy she was, and how 
proud a wife, and how this honeymoon would never 
come to an end. There was a drugging beauty in her 
voice that soothed him and had him dwelling in a 
honeyed sleep. It was sweet to lie in the sun and 
gaze through half-closed lids at the pale sky and 
stifle the voices of hostility that stirred in him 
at her touch, at the caressing notes in her voice, 
at her perpetual drone of contented triumph. She 
allowed him silence, but then only the more keenly 
could he feel her presence. She would sigh out of 
it: 

“A — a — ah ! If we could stay like this forever and 
ever, in this quiet, lovely place filled with nothing but 
us two! If we could stay!” 

He thought of Kurt, and his mania for moving on. 

She said: 

“Rene! What do you like best in the world? I 
should like to give it you.” 

He answered : 

“Peace.” 

“Peace? Isn’t this peace?” 

Anger stirred in him on that. How could she talk 
of peace when to him every moment throbbed with 
menace? He turned over on his side away from her. 

131 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Can there ever be peace,” he asked, “between a 
man and a woman?” 

“What do you mean?” 

He made no reply. 

“Ren! What do you mean? You sounded almost 
angry. Oh, I know what you mean.” And she 
dodged aside into phrases — the war of the sexes, the 
difficulty of adjustment between the masculine- femi- 
nine and the feminine-masculine. He was thinking of 
himself and her, she of abstract entities between whom 
there was an hypothetical bottomless difference. She 
guessed that he might be bored with love-making and 
the honey-dew of desire, and set herself to be interest- 
ing to keep him amused. She succeeded, but not with- 
out exasperating him a little. 

“I meant you and me,” he said, biting out his words. 

“Us? Oh, you dear silly! There never was any- 
thing so wonderful as us. We couldn’t be more won- 
derful. Could we ?” 

“I dunno. But as I sit here, Lin, I can’t help think- 
ing of those damned Smallmans. They must have sat 
here and they must have said: ‘How wonderful we 
are!’ ” 

That seemed to strike home to her, to hurt her, for 
she cried out and jumped to her feet. 

“Oh, I never thought ” 

She moved quickly away and stood on top of a little 
hill against the sky, the wind driving back her skirts 
and sending them ballooning out behind her. He came 
up to her. 

“What did you never think?” 

132 


MATRIMONY 


“That on our second day you would be satirical.” 

He did not know the exact meaning of the word) 
took it to mean the saying of what you do not pre- 
cisely intend. He protested: 

“I said what I felt. Mayn’t I do that? I didn’t 
think it would hurt you, really, I didn’t. Linda, 
I ” 

“Oh, you have such a heavy, stodgy mind. You 
always mean much more than you can say. . And you 
don’t know how uncomfortable it is.” 

She had always been able to make him, in flashes, 
interested in himself. Now her words came on him 
in faint illumination. He stood pondering it. 

“I can’t help it,” he said slowly, “I’m made like 
that. I can’t be comfortable.” 

Her answer seemed to him to clinch the hostility 
between them, to bring it, to his intense relief, out into 
the open. 

“I know you can’t,” she said, “but I can, and you 
mustn’t spoil it for me.” 

He was so grateful to her for this relief that he 
caught hold of her and cried: 

“Oh, Linda, if I thought I had spoiled your happi- 
ness, I would ” 

“What would you do?” 

“I don’t know. But I would move heaven and 
earth to give it back to you.” 

“I believe you would, and that makes me love you.” 

He weakened to her will, and not again during their 
honeymoon did he let slip in expression or gesture the 
133 


YOUNG EARNEST 

tiniest hint of the storm let loose in him. Small 
periods of solitude he could procure at night when she 
had retired for her astonishingly lengthy toilette. 
Then in suppression of his fire and rebellion, in the 
effort to keep a tight control on it even within himself, 
he became aware of a strength, a firmness that, out 
of all that he had lost of youth and ease and pleasant 
happiness and the charm of living, emerged as gain. 
Yet it was not in his nature to count it up nor to hoard. 
He could find much to rejoice over, the splendor of 
the night, the keen winds, the huge waves splashing 
under the wind, and all he would take to his wife for 
her to turn into charm. And she would weave her 
spells round him. Her tone, her eyes, her warmth, 
that was so like tenderness as almost to deceive him 
into acquiescence, all said to him: “Forget! For- 
get !” But every fiber of his will was stretched in the 
effort to remember and gain knowledge — to remem- 
ber how this thing had come about, that he should 
have so much and so little love for this woman, by 
what blindness he had come to it, and what in all his 
slow growth to manhood should have brought him 
to such sweet mockery of it. These were not his 
words. He was groping beyond words, beyond ac- 
tions; his captured force was searching through his 
life to find forces to sustain it, to urge it on, to release 
that slow-moving stream that had brought him thus 
far to be chained and confined. He who had realized 
so little was struggling to realize himself, to find within 
himself the power that should break this woman in 
her complacent dwelling in the pleasure of their love 
134 


MATRIMONY 


and set him free and her. For he had begun dimly to 
perceive that she too was to be thought of, and in his 
effort he was gentle with her. This was hard, for 
against his gentleness she chafed. She wanted turbu- 
lence, upheaval, suspected not the stirring in his depths 
and was forever agitating the surface of his being. 
Once or twice she did call forth the anger, and then she 
reveled in her delicious fright and was so quiet as to 
alarm him and drive him back into his gentleness. 
Out of this she stirred him. It was to her only an 
odious sluggishness. 

It was a comfort to him that he could admire her. 
She touched nothing but she gave it charm. She 
changed the Mapledom of their room to an originality 
of elegance. Her ingenuity and adroitness with her- 
self were a source of amusement and amazement to 
him. The fun of watching a woman in all her ways ! 
Her modesties, her coquetries, her absorption in the 
effect she is going to produce though it be only on 
an old fisherman on the quay! Her deceptions and 
comedies, her ruses, her choice of mood, her skill in 
calling forth the complementary mood in her compan- 
ion ! With Linda Rene took particular delight in her 
wit, her pleasantly malicious comment on the persons 
of their world. Sometimes she would bring out in her 
talk of them qualities and foibles that he had not re- 
marked, though on her indication he was forced to 
admit that they were surprisingly there. Other times 
she seemed to shape them to fit in with a fantastic 
world of her own. And that would be little less amus- 
ing than her criticisms. He could admire her, but his 
135 


YOUNG EARNEST 

admiration made him feel how remote she was, how 
unpossessed, how little he desired possession, and 
how, in all things, she invited to it. 

Perhaps she felt some of his uneasiness, for she 
said toward the end of their stay: 

“I suppose a honeymoon can never be the same to 
a man as it is to a woman.” (The hypothetical man 
and woman of all her arguments.) “A man must 
have his work.” 

“I’ve been thinking,” said Rene, “that we never 
know what we want but when we have it.” 

“How true !” She had a way of making agreement 
with him a sort of flattery, than which he found little 
more distasteful. 

And as they drove to the station she looked round 
at the hills and the rocky coast-line, and murmured: 

“It will be something to remember. It is a pretty 
place.” 

For him it had a beauty that had stirred him like 
nothing else he had ever known. For him also, till 
now, all things had been charming, but the desolate 
moors, the stubborn cliffs had led him away from 
charm to beauty and the savage joy of living in re- 
sistance. 

The return to their world shocked him. From those 
weeks of the profoundest emotions that had ever 
shaken him to come back to amiable superficial rela- 
tionships left him floundering, made him, when he had 
collected himself, feel how utterly dependent he was 
upon his wife. He was committed to her, isolated 
136 


MATRIMONY 


with her. The loneliness of that day upon Ravenscar 
was nothing to the loneliness in the multitude. 

Linda was immediately busy organizing her house- 
hold, buying, buying all day long; visiting, receiving 
visitors; she had crowds of friends and gushing ac- 
quaintances, and they easily assimilated her husband, 
were interested in him as they were interested in her 
wall-papers, her furniture, her plans for the little gar- 
den, her gowns, her china. He used to watch eagerly, 
almost hungrily, for a sign that they recognized his 
existence apart from hers, but no sign ever came. To 
the women he was something belonging to dear Linda, 
and therefore to be admired since she was reputed to 
get the best of everything; to the men, hard-headed, 
commercial gentry, he seemed to be baffling and omi- 
nous, for they either fished nervously and falteringly 
for his views or left him in the silence to which their 
geniality reduced him. 

He resumed his work at the school where he had not 
yet learned to disengage himself from his schoolboy's 
sensations — dread of the headmaster, an inclination to 
run along the corridors when the bell sounded, a desire 
to smack cheeky little boys over the head, reluctance 
to attend prayers in the morning. At the end of the 
year a vacancy occurred on the staff of the university 
and he was appointed to fill it. 

His first tussle with Linda came with his assertion 
of a desire to be alone in his study when he was work- 
ing. She had made a practice of settling down with 
him in the evening with her sewing, or some clerical 
work connected with one of the various committees to 


137 


YOUNG EARNEST 


which she had had herself appointed — social and res- 
cue work, Arts and Crafts, the University Musical 
Society, the Thrigsby Amateur Dramatic Club, the 
Goethe Society, etc. She had learned to be silent, but 
by the plying of her needle or the scratching of her pen 
she disturbed and distracted him. He put up with it 
for some time, but at last it was too strong for him, 
and he protested. 

“But Mrs. Smallman sits with her husband every 
evening.” 

“He may be used to it, and she has a capacity for 
doing nothing which you do not share.” 

“But it’s so absurd to have two fires lit in the 
evening.” 

“I’d rather not work then, and come and sit with 
you.” 

“But you must work. You never say anything.” 

“Then I must work alone.” 

“Why must you?” 

“Because I can’t work any other way.” 

“What is it disturbs you? I won’t do it if you’ll 
tell me.” 

“I can’t tell you. It’s just having you there.” 

“Then you — Then you — Oh, well! There’s 
nothing more to say if you feel like that about me.” 

“Linda, don’t be silly. It isn’t about you.” 

She had already fluttered out of the room and closed 
the door very slowly, so that its movement was the 
most eloquent reproach. 

Followed their first period of coldness, which she 
ended with a flood of tears and a fierce hunger for 

138 


MATRIMONY 


possession and to be possessed by him compared with 
which that of their early days paled in his memory. 
This brought him to a misery from which he could see 
no escape but in the desire to appease her, and he dis- 
sembled and seemed to accept his position as a hus- 
band, one caught and bound and confined wholly to the 
existence of the woman he had wedded, finding no 
pleasure but in hers, no comradeship but in her society, 
no warmth but in her approbation. Thinking to please 
her, he said one day when they were over a year mar- 
ried : 

“The room over the study — that would be the best 
for the nursery when we want one.” 

“But, Rene,” she answered, after a pause, “we don’t 
want to have children yet, do we ?” 

Despair seized him. He could not look at her. 

“No. No. Of course, it is as you please.” 

She smiled awry : 

“Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean you to take it like that. 
It sounded horrid, I know. But for modern men and 
women, it ought to be possible ” 

He could not let her finish. He hated her talk of 
“modern men and women,” as though some change 
had come over human nature. 

“I sometimes think,” he said, “that no single word 
has the same meaning for the two of us. Your Love 
is not my Love, your Yes is not my Yes, your No is 
not mine.” 

“Oh, Rene, you do say some terrible things ! Some- 
times you frighten me. Sometimes you are just a 
helpless silly baby, and sometimes you seem to know 
139 


YOUNG EARNEST 


more than anybody I ever met. You are so strong, but 
you don’t seem to know what to do with your strength, 
and I am terrified of you . . . Oh, I don’t know what 
to do with you ! Can’t we be just happy ?” 

“Just happy! ... I suppose we can.” 

“We have been . . . Haven’t we?” 

“We have been,” he said, but the words in his mind 
were : “No more than happy.” 

To avoid hurting her he had abandoned the use of 
even that much introspective power that he had come 
by in Yorkshire by the sea. Now he worked, let the 
days run by on the wheels of habit, and gave her as 
good a counterfeit as he could make of what she de- 
sired. 

She decided in her own mind that he was working 
too hard, and must be taken out of his solitude, which 
she ascribed to his inability to find his feet socially 
after being lifted out of his own class, and dumped into 
hers. Her brother was wanting to get rid of his first 
small two-cylinder car to buy a new 30-40 h.p. She 
made him an offer for the little car, and he closed with 
it and undertook to teach Rene to drive. 

That was not a very difficult matter. Two lessons 
sufficed, and Rene was left with the car on his hands 
and no knowledge of its mechanism. 

“But what shall I do if it breaks down?” 

“It can’t break down,” said Kurt. “The magneto 
can’t go wrong. If she stops, clean the sparking plug 
or put in a new one. It must be that or the jet.” 

Rene tried to read a book about motor-cars, but 
140 


MATRIMONY 


could not apply its technicalities to his own machine. 
He spent some days in and about and under the car, 
tracing out the principles on which it worked, and fol- 
lowing its transmission of energy from cylinder to 
clutch, from clutch to gear, gear to back-axle. When 
he had done that he felt some confidence in driving, 
came to know the moods of his engine, and to take an 
extraordinary pleasure in handling it. Every week- 
end he made some excursion with Kurt or Linda, and 
sometimes alone. He explored the country for fifty 
miles round Thrigsby, and discovered to his dismay 
the vastness of the network of industrial towns, and, 
to his delight, the loveliness of the still uncontaminated 
country. 

At first the change produced the effect Linda had 
desired. He had a new energy which enabled him to 
take the dull work of the week lightly. He seemed to 
have caught some of Kurt’s enthusiasm together with 
a little of his good humor and tolerance. But these 
qualities he could not assume without the frankness 
that nourished them. Soon he was no longer deceived 
by the counterfeit he had evolved for his wife’s satis- 
faction, and could not evade the fact that his excursions 
were desired chiefly as an escape from it. Their two 
habitual lives were organized effectively enough ; it was 
when their lives met that there was insufficiency, fum- 
bling, distrust, evasion. He could not altogether con- 
ceal from her the disgust and almost horror that he 
felt on being faced with the deception he had practiced 
on himself, and through himself on her. She saw his 
distress, could not altogether understand, felt that she 
141 


YOUNG EARNEST 

was giving him too many opportunities to escape from 
her, and in her turn began to counterfeit an interest 
in his enthusiasms and to insist on occupying a seat in 
the car whenever he went away, whether Kurt was 
with him or not. Kurt had an affectionate pampering 
way with her, a mere expedient for striking harmony 
between their different natures, which Rene as usual, 
taking seriously, misread as contempt. This, unknown 
to himself, encouraged the growth of the hatred which 
he had never allowed to rear its head. . . . And Linda, 
a little wearied by now of the part of the lover, had 
begun to play the part of the devoted, settled wife, to 
throw up round herself as bulwarks her advantages — 
her charming house, her ample means, her distin- 
guished husband, a man of learning and culture in a 
commercial atmosphere, leisure among the unleisured. 
It was only an experiment on her part, but she gave it 
a thorough trial. When it failed she had her mo- 
ments of despair. She had felt her husband’s with- 
drawal from her, at least the removal of the deceit 
which covered it. She was enraged, determined to 
break him into submission, flung the whole force of her 
nature into the effort and failed again. Then, to es- 
cape boredom, she began to amuse herself with her 
sufferings. She would lead him on to talk in his inar- 
ticulate fashion of what he felt and then play upon his 
emotions and bring him back abruptly to her own 
charm, to realize her greater skill and agility in life, 
her rightness in the business of living and presenting a 
brave front to the world, and sometimes he would al- 
most admit that she was right, and that, after all, since 
142 


MATRIMONY 


he could produce nothing definitely superior to her 
desire, he had better yield and give her those good 
things that, in their easy circumstances, they were priv- 
ileged to enjoy — charm and excitement and pleasure. 
But he could not. Life had always been hard for him. 
He could not consent to have it easy. All that she fed 
on turned to bitterness in his mouth. 

He tried to tell her once of the tenderness his mother 
had given him on the night before he had come to her, 
the pure joy that, but for the omen at his heart, he had 
taken for a foretaste of the heaven he was to enter. 
She said : 

“She is a dear old woman, your mother.” 

In the way she said it, in the purely sentimental in- 
terest she showed, he knew that all he had been talking 
of lay outside her world, and he remembered Kurt 
quoting with approval a remark some man had made : 

“Linda Brock has no back to her mind.” 

It became a desperate longing with him to make her 
feel, to rouse her to a realization of the emptiness and 
coldness of her crowded, brilliant life. And he longed 
to be able to go to her and say : “See ! This is hurting 
me here and here, and I am aching with the pain of it.” 
If only she would come and show her hurt to him! 
His longing was often in his eyes as he looked at her, 
never in self-pity. He was as far from that as from 
judging her. She had changed him so; had so far 
estranged him from himself, from his little world of 
dreams and hopes, that in his first adoration of her, 
his innocent appreciation of her womanhood, he had 
so nearly conquered for his own. 

143 


YOUNG EARNEST 


And he began to question his everyday life. It 
seemed mechanical. He had been shaped for the posi- 
tion he filled, fitted into it so tightly that he could never 
move. He would be carried on forever by the machine 
that had caught him up as a small boy when they had 
marked him down in the Lower Third. (They had 
written to his mother: “He is a boy of whom the 
school will one day be proud.” And she had been so 
elated by the words.) He had accepted the force of 
the machine and let it take the place of his own will. 
That was unpracticed. He had used it for nothing. 
The machine had carried him to security and given 
him things apparently so coveted that his brother 
George could not now speak to him naturally, so great 
was his awe of his success. It was so easy to think 
the thoughts required by the machine. A kind of 
education had been pumped into him. He had now 
only to pump that same kind of education into other 
young men. The machine was efficient, himself effi- 
cient in it. There was satisfaction in that. But all 
the other men with whom he worked were elusive ; so 
many of them, under the pleasant manners of the 
common-room, concealed despondency, a mood of 
resignation that was epidemic, more virulent at one 
time than another. Against that, too, Rene was in 
revolt. Instinctively he felt that if he surrendered to 
it he would fall also to that other danger in his do- 
mestic life. 

He tried to understand Linda. She was so success- 
ful. So many people liked her. Her social progress 
was amazing. Efficiency always gave him pleasure, 
144 


MATRIMONY 


and it was delightful to him, though he hated it, to 
feel her skillfully consolidating their position. She 
was tremendously active in all external things. It was 
her inward activity that he wished to understand. 
What were the things that satisfied that clever brain 
of hers? What her heart? He had long ago swept 
aside her pseudo-science, sociology, physiology, psy- 
chology, as external to herself, things worn as she wore 
clothes, very well, to be becoming and in the mode. It 
pleased her intellectually to talk of a hypothetical man 
and woman. What did that hypothetical man and 
woman become in art? He followed her in her read- 
ing, her music — so far as one so uninstructed could 
follow at all. . . . German sentimental lieder , colored 
lanterns over water, sweet flirtations, violins in the 
distance; a sighing for the passing of youth; a linger- 
ing over the sweets of love, with ultimately a with- 
drawal from love; a perfume. That was her art. In 
her drawing-room she had impressionist and post- 
impressionist drawings ; in her own room she had pic- 
tures of young men and maidens in ballrooms and 
canoes and French boudoirs. 

He could see the charm of the things she loved, al- 
ways melted to them, but never without a reaction, an 
angry stiffening of the will. 

At the same time, while his emotional interest in her 
faded, he found an increasing pleasure in watching 
her, in noting her movements as one marks a lovely 
animal in its cage. That, at any rate, was satisfying. 
She had beautiful lines, gestures that could thrill him 
with their grace, and he liked the skill with which she 
145 


YOUNG EARNEST 

clothed herself to give every one of her attractions 
free play. 

It was not long before she became aware of his cold, 
indolent appreciation, and resented it, and plunged him 
back into the excitement which could make him writhe. 
It was then that they came into direct conflict, he 
clinging to his intellectual admiration for her and cool 
appreciation of her quality, she determined to deprive 
him of it. 

At last she brought him to an angry, reckless vio- 
lence. She chid him for it. Almost weeping in his 
mortification and shame, he cried : 

“You talk as though marriage were just a covering 
up, a shelter from abominations.” 

“Ah!” She too was angry now. “What else is 
it?” 

“By God !” he said. “I thought it led to love.” 

And again he found himself in that blind fury that 
had seized him on hearing his father’s cynicism. 

For some days they avoided each other. She made 
some pretext — wished to have some of the rooms pa- 
pered — and went to stay with her mother. 


XII 


ESCAPE 

Ant. Come, I’ll be out of this ague, 

For to live thus is not indeed to live, 

It is a mockery and abuse of life. 

I will not henceforth serve myself by halves ! 
Love all or nothing. 

Delio. Your own virtue save you! 

T YE spent hours brooding, prowling in the streets, 
in whose dull monotony his mind had grown so 
undisturbedly, responding to their small gaieties and 
smaller excitements, but moving on in the even 
smoothness of their life. It seemed incredible to him 
that such turmoil could have come out of them, and 
yet that turmoil had begun even before his marriage, 
before he had met his wife. Was there some strange- 
ness in himself? Of his nature he became doubtful 
and suspicious. Yet the habit of acceptance was too 
strong in him; even his misery he could accept. Very 
laboriously he strove to come by an idea of himself, 
and was only the more confused when he arrived at 
this : 

“They won’t come out to meet me, and when I go 
out to meet them, they run away. I cannot enjoy 
147 


YOUNG EARNEST 


their pleasures, and they seem to want nothing else. 
It gets worse and worse. I couldn’t even talk to Elsie 
now. Almost anyone can make me seem ridiculous.” 

Linda wrote to him : 

“Can’t you see, Ren dear, that there are some things 
won’t bear thinking of, and spoil with thinking. You 
poor, tortured thing!” (Least <$f all did he want pity 
from her.) “I know you don’t really want to think, 
and you don’t think easily, like most people. At least 
you seem to hate thinking without coming to a conclu- 
sion. It is something finer than obstinacy, because it 
isn’t at all for yourself that you want — what you want. 
What do you want? Isn’t it enough to be happy? Oh, 
my dear, do let us be happy! I have been crying 
every night. It isn’t that I mind being apart; hus- 
bands and wives must be apart sometimes if their life 
is to be possible and decent, but I can’t bear our being 
apart in spirit.” 

Then she had understood! She had seen the gulf 
between them. She would help him to bridge it. 

He hastened to her joyfully, and caught her up in 
a great embrace, so that she laughed in delicious terror. 

And the torment began again. She had seen, under- 
stood, nothing. She was only for teasing, wheedling, 
cajoling him into submission. She told him — carefully 
choosing her moment — that she would bear him chil- 
dren, and for a little while, a second or two, he was 
appeased. Then his excited imagination worked on 
that. A child would mean only another entity in the 
house, the empty house, where there was no love to 
absorb it and foster its growth; more antagonism; 

148 


ESCAPE 


more separation; his child or hers, it would not be 
both. He could not see at all clearly, but the idea of 
it had for him now something horrible. With no 
count of his words he said : 

“I do not wish for anything that you yourself do 
not want.” 

“I want it.” 

“Then why talk of it ?” 

“A man and a woman ” 

“Talk of us, woman, talk of us. God! You don’t 
know how you spoil things with your busy mind. 
True things, simple things, lovely things, things that 
lie deep in heart and mind, there is nothing that you 
will not shape and mold and knead and twist into 
your own image, pretty, pretty, charming. Oh, the 
lies of it all, the lies, the lies, the lies ! And you never 
know what you are doing. All is for your pleasure. 
Nothing can lead you beyond that. And everything 
that menaces your pleasure you draw with your busy 
brain into words, words.” 

“You don’t know what you are saying.” 

“No.” 

He, looked up at her with his eyes glazed and dull, 
his jaw trembling, his fingers rubbing over and over 
again upon his thumbs. 

“If you have said what is true, then you must 
hate me.” 

“Yes.” 

He stated it as though it were a plain fact well 
coated over by habit, so that it could give no pain. She 
was tranquil, seemed to have tight control over herself. 

149 


YOUNG EARNEST 


She walked twice up and down the room. Then she 
turned to him and said very quietly : 

“l knew a long time ago that if it ever came to a 
scene it would be the end. I suppose I’m not romantic 
enough for you. I don’t know what it is. But I know 
enough to feel that a scene with you would be serious. 
Even little girls know that men must have scenes. It’s 
a kind of love-making with them. You’re different.” 

“Yes.” 

“I can’t pretend that you haven’t hurt me.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Oh, I’d like to pretend. But I’ve changed, too. I 
suppose you can’t marry without being changed. A 
woman who loses her husband looks silly. But she 
needn’t if she doesn’t feel it. You can’t pretend. 
Neither can I. You’ve taught me that. We’ve failed 
where nearly everybody else fails, but we admit it. 
What’s the good of pitching good life after bad? It’s 
no one’s business but our own. They’ll talk. Let them 
talk.” 

He hardly heard what she said. He was weary of 
her voice droning on and on. 

“If it is the end,” he muttered, “then there is no 
more to be said.” 

He walked round to Professor Smallman’s. He had 
no notion of the time. Mrs. Smallman admitted him, 
saw that something was wrong, showed him into the 
study, and left him. He stood leaning against the 
doorpost. The Professor was sitting in his great 
chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in 
the other. 


ESCAPE 


“Good evening,” said Rene. “I have left my wife.” 

Down went the Professor’s legs, round came his 
head out of the great chair: 

“Great God!” 

“I just walked round to tell you. I don’t know 
why.” 

“But, my dear fellow, what on earth — * Not two 
years.” 

“Is it?” 

“I say. Is she? Would you like Freda to go 
round ?” 

“No. She is quite calm. It’s finished. It’s she who 
said it. It never began.” 

“Come, come. Sit down. You’d better sleep here 
to-night.” 

“No, thanks. I don’t want to see you ever again.” 

“Tut, tut! My good Fourmy!” 

“I mean it,” said Rene dispassionately. 

“Wait a moment.” 

The Professor hurried out of the room, and Rene 
could hear him in the hall talking eagerly to his wife. 
He was seized with a dreary impatience of these good 
people, with their unfailing kindness. He knew per- 
fectly well that in a moment they would return, hus- 
band and wife, the husband and wife, and throw him 
scraps of their happiness for comfort and persuasion, 
while with their exchange of glances they would bar 
him out. No. That was intolerable. He stepped to 
the French window, opened it, and walked out, 
round the house and through the garden into the 
street. 


YOUNG EARNEST 

Another false move checked ; another false relation- 
ship ended. 

He slept that night at the Denmark, lied and enjoyed 
lying to Mr. Sherman, saying that his wife was away 
and he had lost his key and could not wake the serv- 
ants. He sat in his room at the Denmark feeling at 
peace and very confident, until his father came. Then 
he sat with the boon company, told them one or two 
stories that he was able to remember from the stock of 
the Common Room, told them heavily, dully, so that 
they gained in comicality and roused laughter. His 
father seemed to him rather contemptible. He en- 
joyed his own old jests as much as his audience, and 
that was displeasing to Rene’s fastidious mood. 

He walked home with his father, who was loqua- 
cious and tiresome. At last Rene interrupted him : 

“Father, do you mind not talking while I tell you 
what I have to tell? I have left Linda. I can’t tell 
you why without being unjust to her, because I can’t 
see clearly enough. She said it was finished, and so it 
is. I am extraordinarily happy. I never was so happy 
in my life. I have, in effect, told Professor Smallman 
to go to hell, and I shall do the same with anybody 
else who tries to interfere. I don’t know what I am 
going to do, and I don’t care. It is quite clear to me 
that there is no room for Linda and me in the same set 
of people. They talk so. I have no intention of con- 
tinuing the life I have been leading. Everything I 
have ever done, as long as I can remember, has been 
because someone else wanted me to do it, or because 

152 


ESCAPE 


someone else thought I could. It has been surprising 
and delightful, but never satisfying. George has made 
a better thing out of his life than I. At least he has 
done what he wanted to do, though you and I may 
not think much of it. I don’t think I can see my 
mother. I would dearly like to, but I could not bear 
it. She would make me feel something, and at present 
I feel nothing at all. But I can remember her face 
against mine, and her voice saying: *1 have always 
tried to do my best.’ Good night. Give her my love.” 

He turned on his heel, but his father caught him by 
the arm: 

“Don’t be a young lunatic,” he said. “You can’t 
go like that.” 

“I can,” answered Rene, puzzled that anybody 
should deny what was actually happening. “I can. 
Don’t you see that I am going?” 

“Look here, I’m a bit of a queer one myself, but do 
you know what you are doing?” 

“For the first time in my life,” said Rene, “I know 
what I am doing. And I like it so immensely that I 
am going on doing it. You can’t stop me. Nothing 
can stop me. You said yourself that we live in a world 
of women, and I want to make the best of it.” 

His father let go of his arm. 

“Good Lord!” he said, “I’ve had my day, but I 
never was so cracked as that.” 

Then he acquiesced in his son’s indifference, nodded 
his head in a light parting, and went his way. 

Rene’s thoughts were reaching out to Scotland, to 
153 


YOUNG EARNEST 


his Aunt Janet’s, where he had known the best of his 
boyhood. He walked to a station and found the Lon- 
don express waiting, with little knots of people stand- 
ing by the carriage doors, and porters bustling with 
luggage and lamps and pillows, all wearing the 
stealthy, excited air of importance of travelers by 
night. Putney was London, or near London. Why 
Putney? He did not know, but he wanted to go 
there. He bought a ticket, boarded a train as it was 
moving, and sat in a corner seat gazing at the. lights 
of the towns and saying to himself : “That’s Ockley,” 
because when he had taken his first railway journey by 
night he had asked what the lights were, and his 
mother had said : “That’s Ockley.” 


BOOK TWO 


ANN PIDDUCK 


. . . and make 

Strange combinations out of common things 
Like human babes in their brief innocence, 

And we will search with looks and words of love 
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last. 


I 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON * 

Et quelle est la femme qui ne chercherait pas a vous 
rendre heureux! 

TTE awoke with a parched mouth and cramped 
^ limbs to find himself being shaken and to hear a 
voice saying: 

“Hi, mate, time to wake up. Can’t leave you no 
longer.” 

“Eh? Is this London?” 

“Aye, and London it’s been these three hours past. 
You came in by the five-twenty-five, and I couldn’t 
get you to wake up, I couldn’t. You’re in the sid- 
ings.” 

Rene shook himself and clambered down with the 
red-headed railway porter, and walked with him across 
the rails through several coaches, back to the station. 

“Been ill, mate?” 

“No. Why?” 

“I never see such a face. Got more than your fair 
share of bones in it. It was that made me leave you.” 

“I’m much obliged.” 

The big clock announced five minutes past eight. 

“No luggage?” asked the porter. 

157 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“No. No luggage.” 

“Going to see friends?” 

“No.” 

“You’ll excuse me asking, but I don’t like letting you 
go alone with a face like that. D’you know Lon- 
don?” 

“No.” 

“You’ll want breakfast.” 

Rene realized that he was hungry. The porter took 
him to a pull-up in a noisy street, filled with the clang 
of tramcars and the roar and rattle of heavy drays 
coming from the goods yard. They had coffee and 
ham and great hunks of bread. 

“I never see such a sleeper,” said the porter. 

“I was tired, I think.” 

That struck the porter as a good joke. He kept on 
chuckling to himself and saying : 

“Tired? I should think you was. Tired! He says 
he was tired !” 

Presently he became solemn and leaned across the 
deal-topped table. 

“I can’t make you out, mate. I don’t know if you’re 
a gent or what. You’re from the North. It’s easy 
to see that. What is it? Trouble?” 

“Not exactly trouble. Nothing unusual, I mean. 
It’s been going on for a long time.” 

“They’re not after you, then?” 

“Oh, no. No one’s after me.” 

The porter’s expression showed both disappointment 
and relief. 

“Is it far to Putney?” asked Rene. 

158 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON 


“It’s where the boat-race is,” said the porter. “I 
been there. An hour in a bus or train.” 

“I mean — to walk. I’d like to walk. To see Lon- 
don. I’ve never seen it, you know.” 

“It’d be Fulham Road, I fancy, though I don’t know 
those parts well. Friends at Putney ?” 

“Someone I know there.” 

“I see. You’ll be going home soon. Return 
ticket ?” 

“No. I just wanted to see London. At least, there 
was a train going to London.” 

“Ain’t lost your memory, have you, mate ?” 

“No,” said Rene. “No. I’ve lost interest in it, 
that’s all.” 

“Money? Got any money?” 

Rene thrust his hand into his pocket and produced 
three pounds and a few shillings. 

“And no friends,” said the porter to himself. “Well, 
you are a corker, and no mistake! Set on going to 
Putney, are you?” Rene nodded. “Well, if you want 
a friend, come to me.” And he wrote down ?n address 
in Kentish Town which Rene pocketed without look- 
ing at it. 

“But if I was you,” said the little man, “I should 
go back home, I should, really. See your friends and 
go back home. I had a brother once who got crossed 
in love. Took it something crool, he did, and walked 
out of the house one day after breakfast and went to 
Canada. We sent him the money to come home, and 
now he’s doing well in the drysalting. Good-by, mate, 
and good luck.” 


159 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He held out a grimy paw, and Rene clasped it warm- 
ly. It was, he felt, a good beginning. 

For some time he sat in the pull-up watching the 
busy trade in victuals, the burly carters, weedy clerks 
and boys come in and gulp down their food and drink 
as though the beginning of the day’s work hardly left 
them time for their natural necessities. It was all odd- 
ly familiar and like enough to the life he had been 
accustomed to in the school and university among fac- 
tories and warehouses. Only, as he looked out of the 
window, the light was different, softer and more gen- 
erous. It was exciting and invited him out. 

He paid the bill, returned to the station, and washed 
and had himself shaved. As he left the barber’s shop 
he saw a train loading up for its journey to Thrigsby, 
and he stayed and watched it go out for the pleasure 
of feeling that he was not in it. Then he turned 
briskly away for the adventure of the plunge into 
London. 

A foreign city! He could hardly understand the 
language spoken by the people in the streets. Within 
a quarter of a mile he came on a great garden with 
trees and grass, and down a street he could see more 
trees. A keen air was blowing. It was invigorating 
and whipped up his blood. In Thrigsby, when the air 
was keen it was unpleasant and devastating. The 
boarding-houses and private hotels in the region of the 
station seemed to him very lordly houses. They had 
wide, handsome doors that were in themselves a wel- 
come — a welcoming and no indifferent city. It seemed 
to him that the people in the streets were aware of each 
160 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON 


other. At least he was aware of them, and pleased 
with every kind of person. So many of them were 
amused, so many found it good to be walking the 
streets, and they had some mind and energy to spare 
from the business of the moment. Even the people in 
the sordid streets through which he passed had the air 
of bearing their squalor good-humoredly. No one was 
moody or grimly silent. And there was color. He 
knew the color of many country-sides, but always on 
entering the cities he had felt as though a dirty sponge 
had been passed over his vision. Certain streets 
seemed to be filled with a dancing, colored light. He 
was lured on from one to another, with no thought of 
time or direction. Some of the great thoroughfares 
were so familiar from pictures that he felt at home in 
them, and was queerly put out when they led on to 
places and views of which he had no recollection. 
Finding himself approaching a church as well known 
to him as the Collegiate Church in Thrigsby, he said 
to himself with a sudden thrill of almost awe : “This 
is the Strand !” And then down a street he caught 
sight of water. The river! He almost ran down 
toward it. 

The tide was up, the river at its broadest. On the 
other side were great platforms surmounted with tall 
cranes that seemed higher than the highest steeple. 
Beyond were towers, chimneys, domes, standing out 
against the sky that so delighted and refreshed him. 
That sky and the water in the wide sweep of the river! 
Friendliness and power ! The river seemed to bear on 
its broad back the bridges, the tall buildings, the bus- 
161 


YOUNG EARNEST 


tling energy about them, the twin masses of the city 
built up on its flanks. And along the river with the 
tide came a lovely air, sweetening and restoring. That 
was indeed a welcome, and he felt that he had passed 
into another world and become its citizen. He felt no 
more the strain of the crisis through which he had 
passed. The years of unceasing labor that lay between 
his boyhood and this moment were wiped out. The 
current of his being flowed again. He was as eager 
as a boy, as ripe for adventure, weighed down only 
by the memory of the dark little house that had been 
his home, and that other house so full of gracious 
things, so empty of all that could justify their gra- 
ciousness. And, like a boy, he lacked purpose. He 
had nothing but his fantastic desire to go to Putney, 
and he was reluctant to tear himself away from the 
fascination of the river. But the porter had said the 
boat-race was rowed at Putney and the river must be 
there also. 

So he walked along the river past the Houses of 
Parliament. He had once made a cardboard replica of 
it as a child, and, remembering that, his mind was filled 
with other childish memories — illnesses, books, fights 
with George, games and exploits with other boys, next- 
door neighbors, the small girl at his first school who 
had cast a blight over his life by announcing that she 
was in love with him — Past the tall chimneys at 
Chelsea; and then, taking a wrong turning, he found 
himself in a desolate region, almost as desolate as any 
in Thrigsby but for the generous sky above it. And 
the two sides of little houses did not so dreadfully 
162 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON 


close in upon the street as they did in the mean quar- 
ters of the northern city. Nothing here was so cramp- 
ing and destroying as there. 

At length he came to Putney Bridge and crossed it 
into what looked like a holiday town, Southport, or 
Buxton, or Matlock. He asked a policeman the way 
to Putney. 

“This is Putney.” 

“I want Mr. Bentley’s house. It is called Rose- 
neath.” 

“Mr. Bentley. He’s dead. Six months ago.” 

Rene asked to be directed to his house. The tidings 
he had received had made his memory of Mr. Bentley 
very clear — gruff, kindly, patronizing, a little pomp- 
ous, conscious of being a success and “somebody.” He 
had his name printed very large on luggage labels, and 
the note-paper on which Cathleen used to write was 
crested, with something about Judex on the scroll be- 
neath the crest. And Mrs. Bentley was always tired, 
and her husband used to keep everybody flying round 
to fetch and carry for her. But they had very nice 
ways, and their house in Scotland was always open, 
even if it was overfull of athletic young men, highly 
polished and oppressively clean. 

When he came to the house, Rene found it empty. 
He was disappointed with its aspect. It was very like 
the Brocks’ house in Galt’s Park, must have been built 
about the same time; stucco with absurd Gothic win- 
dows ; a square porch, rooms on either side of it. He 
was disappointed, for he had thought of the Bentleys 
living in a region remote and inaccessible, beyond any- 
163 


YOUNG EARNEST 


thing he had ever known or could know. He remem- 
bered the agent’s description of his own house — “an 
eminently desirable family residence.” This house 
bore almost the same recommendation. The fantastic 
London that he had shaped in his mind began to fall 
away. It had something in common with Thrigsby, 
was connected with it by something more than the 
deep sleep in which he had been borne hither. He felt 
rather foolish standing there by the empty house, and 
saw with dismay how much more foolish he would 
have been if the house had been occupied and the 
Bentleys accessible. He had a sick fear as he saw how 
irresponsibly he had acted, and how separate his im- 
pulse had been from his will. 

“All the same,” he said, “it is done. It is done. I 
thought I should always know what would happen to 
me, but this I did not know. It makes it easy for 
Linda. The Smallmans will help her to see how badly 
I have behaved. They will like saying it and ex- 
plaining to all their friends. They will talk about all 
they did for me. I never wanted them to do anything. 
I never wanted — « If I had been like George and 
gone into business? But I could not have stood 
that, either. It would have been over sooner. Other 
people stand things, worse things, too. Oh, well — I 
can’t.” 

It gave him no pleasure to think that he was differ- 
ent from other people. Rather the reverse; it brought 
an acute pang of something like shame. He moved 
on. He lost himself in the polite streets of Putney 
with their little gardens, but came at last to another 
164 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON 


bridge. The sun was setting, and he stood and 
watched it weave a changing tapestry on the sky. 

“So the days go,” he said. “I think I never noticed 
a day go before. There must have been something 
very wrong with me.” 

That lightened his heart. To have confessed his 
failure was already in some sort to justify it, and 
though the cloud upon his mind had grown darker, he 
was sensible of a release of feeling. He could breathe 
again. He was no longer the cramped, huddled crea- 
ture that he had been all day. He could rejoice as the 
sky grew dark and the stars came out and the glow of 
the great city went up into the sky. There were 
patches in the sky so lurid that they filled him with 
alarm that they must mean fire. He moved toward 
one of those lurid patches and found himself presently 
in a narrow thoroughfare crowded with men and 
women, youths and maidens. The street was streaked 
with light and darkness. Cheap bazaars were 
thronged; shops filled with automatic machines of en- 
tertainment were garishly lit ; there were butchers' and 
greengrocers' shops open to the air, blazing with color 
under electric and naphtha lamps ; there were stalls in 
the road, barrows of artificial flowers ; white kinemato- 
graph houses; terra-cotta music-halls and theaters; 
crimson-tiled and green-brick public-houses; swarms 
of human beings, talking, laughing, singing, the laugh- 
ter of excited girls. He shrank within himself from 
the harsh vitality of it all. He was filled with a dread 
of calling down some of the laughter upon himself. 
The road grew narrower, the wheeled traffic more con- 

165 


YOUNG EARNEST 


gested; the yellow and red trams seemed to fill the 
street. Motor-cars, trams, carts, all moved slowly and 
cautiously. A little girl started to move across the 
road, her eyes fixed on someone or something she had 
seen on the other side. Another step and she would 
be under a motor-car. Rene moved to save her. At 
the same moment, from the other side, he saw a young 
woman dart out, catch the child up, fling her back, 
and rush on in her own impetus. She slipped in the 
tramline, and almost fell just within his reach. He 
caught her arm, pulled her up, and dragged both her 
and the child back to his own side of the road. The 
traffic moved on and no one seemed to have seen what 
had happened. The child saw her opportunity and 
dashed over in safety, leaving Rene and the young 
woman together. 

“A near thing that,” said he. 

“I think I’ve hurt my foot. I slipped on the tram- 
line. They do stick up just here.” 

“Can you walk?” 

She tried, but twisted up her face with the pain of it. 

“O-o-oh ! Crimes ! Let me hold on to you.” 

He supported her, and she found that she could just 
hobble. 

“Rotten luck!” she said. “I was going to a dance. 
Don’t you love dancing? Just like me, though; if 
there’s ever any trouble going, I get it. I shall have 
to go home now.” 

“Is it far?” 

“Not far. The busses go by. Any old bus from 
that corner.” They had come to a circus where many 
1 66 


ADVENTURE IN LONDON 

roads meet. “Mitcham Mews. Number six. Don’t 
you trouble. You just put me into the bus.” 

“But I must see you home.” 

“I ’spect you got someone waiting for you. ’Tain’t 
fair to spoil your fun.” 

“This is much better fun than anything I can im- 
agine doing!” 

“ ’Tain’t my idea of fun, helping a lame duck over 
a stile. It’s good of you, anyway. Penny fare.” 

They boarded a bus and she leaned down and 
prodded at her ankle to discover where and how much 
it hurt. 

“It’s only ricked, I think,” she said. “It feels like 
your neck when your head goes gammy. I don’t think 
it’s a sprain.” 

Rene was filled with admiration of her vivacious 
prettiness. She had an oval face; a dark complexion 
beautifully colored, ivory most delicately colored with 
crimson ; wide-set eyes that were still merry in spite of 
the pain smoldering in them ; a pouting mouth that, as 
she talked, showed perfect teeth, small and even bril- 
liant, strong as an animal’s dark hair neatly arranged 
under a rather common hat. She had a necklet of 
imitation pearls round her soft throat. Her dress was 
neat, but just a little shabby. She laughed lightly, and 
her laughter lit up her face with a radiant happiness. 

“What youmight call beingthrown together,” shesaid. 

He could not but smile with her. 

“I’m rather glad,” he answered. “Do you know 
that I hadn’t spoken to a soul but a railway porter and 
a policeman since early morning?” 

167 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Reely,” said she. “I think Fd die if I couldn’t talk. 
Here’s where we get off. O-o-oh !” 

She hung more heavily on his ar&i as they descend- 
ed. They stood for a moment to watch the bus jolt 
back into its top gear and go roaring up the wide and 
almost empty street. 

“It’s not far.” 

They moved slowly for some fifty yards, past empty 
shops, until they came to an archway plastered on 
either side with the bills of local music-halls, and lit 
with an old gas-jet. Through the archway they 
turned and came to a dark place, very quiet, with long 
low buildings on either side of it, and a great litter of 
paper and refuse on the pavement, and handcarts and 
vans uptilted. The ground floors of the buildings were 
all taken up with doors, the first floors with little win- 
dows, in some of which were flower-boxes and bird- 
cages and hanging ferns. One or two of the windows 
were lit up. From the other end, far up, came the 
glaring lights of a motor-par. It stopped, and they 
could hear the purr of its sweetly running engine. 

“That’s Mr. Ripley,” said the young woman. “He’s 
often out at night. He’s a oner, he is. Down to 
Brighton and back and all that, you know.” 

Rene did not know, but he was pleased and excited. 
London had ceased to be a spectacle to him. He had 
been drawn into an adventure, taken to a place where 
people lived — and a very strange place — the friendli- 
est of hands was on his arm, the cheeriest of voices 
ringing in his ears. 


1 68 


II 


MITCHAM MEWS 

Do not her dark eyes tell thee thou art not despised? The 
Heaven’s messenger! All Heaven’s blessings be hers. 

T’M sorry,” she said, “but you’ll have to help me 
upstairs. Wasn’t I a fool to go and get tripped up 
like that ? — O-o-h ! Hercules !” 

Rene took her in his arms and carried her up the 
narrow little stairs. She opened the door and asked 
him to come in and have a cup of tea. After she had 
put the kettle on and lit the gas she sat and took a long 
look at him. 

“I like you,” she said. “And I suppose I shan’t see 
you again. That’s always the way. The people you 
like best you see only once, or in the train, or going by 
in a bus. Is it far where you live ?” 

“I don’t know where I live.” 

“Go on. I’m not that sort.” 

“It’s true. I’ve only just come to London. This 
morning.” 

“Leave your things at the station ?” 

“Things? No, I didn’t bring any.” 

“Well! I never!” 

She shrugged her amazement away, his adventures 
being no business of hers. 

169 


YOUNG EARNEST 


After she had made the tea she removed her shoes 
and stockings and examined her ankle. It was in- 
flamed and slightly swollen. She made him rub it, 
giving little gasps as he touched or wrenched the sore- 
ness. 

“ Tisn’t a sprain? You don’t think it’s a sprain? 
I don’t care as long as it isn’t a sprain.” 

“No, I shouldn’t think it’s a sprain; but you’d better 
ask someone else.” 

“Are you Scotch?” 

“No. Why do you ask?” 

“You talk funny. I say arsk.” 

“My home’s up north.” 

“Home. Father and mother ?” 

“Well — no. A wife and all that.” 

“O-o-h! Married?” 

She looked unhappy and uncomfortable for a mo- 
ment. Then she said : 

“I shouldn’t have thought it. You look so young. 
What did you do ?” 

“Lectured and took pupils at the university.” 

“College ? I know. There’s a big school just round 
here. I suppose it’s something like that. I seen the 
teachers. Half-baked they look, some of them. Was 
that it?” 

“I don’t know what it was. Things came to a 
head suddenly. I was taken by surprise. I think 
it will take me some time to realize quite what has 
happened.” 

She asked his name. He gave it and she hers, Ann 
Pidduck, and she worked in a factory, pickles and con- 
170 


MITCHAM MEWS 


diments, at the packing, putting wooden boxes together 
with a machine that drove in four nails at a time. Once 
she had been ill and sent away and taught the artificial 
flowers, and she did that too, in her spare time, for 
some hat-shops in the High Street, and for one or two 
ladies she knew. She used to live at home with her 
mother, who had turned religious and couldn’t put up 
with a bit of fun. And she had a friend who lived in 
these rooms when there were still horses in the mews, 
but the friend had gone out to Canada on a farm, 
“where you get married at once if you’re anything 
like.” She broke off her story : 

“What are you going to do?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Well, you can’t just sit and look at London till it 
begins to look at you.” 

“No.” ^ 

“You look as if you’d like to sit there forever and 
ever. Oh, you do look tired, poor thing! But keep 
awake a little, there’s a dear. I must know what I’m 
going to do with you.” 

He could hardly keep his attention fixed on what 
she was saying, but he fastened his eyes on her to make 
her understand that he was listening. 

“You don’t want to go home? No?” 

He shook his head. 

“Popped the lid on it, have you?” 

He nodded. 

“Got any money ?” 

“In a bank.” 

“All right. You’ll want clothes and things. You 
171 


YOUNG EARNEST 


can write. Only I want to know; it’s nothing I 
.shouldn’t like ? Is it?” 

“No.” 

“I don’t want you to tell me, but I wouldn’t like to 
think you’d done something you’d be sorry for. . . . 
You haven’t drunk your tea. I say, you haven’t drunk 
your tea. Asleep. I’m off. Good night.” 

And she limped away into the inner room. 

When he awoke the next day he remembered that 
she had come to him in the morning, shaken him out 
of his deep sleep, and made him understand that he 
could have her bed, sent him staggering toward it, and 
then, as he sank back into unconsciousness, he remem- 
bered hearing the door slam. 

She had laid breakfast for him, tea, bread and but- 
ter, and an egg lying ready to be boiled in a saucepan. 
He was at first petulant at her absence, but shook 
himself up enough to see that he was not in a position 
to feel any such thing, and to be amazed at his own 
acquiescence in the unexpected. It was somehow dis- 
reputable, this discovery of himself in a strange room 
after two nights spent in his clothes. He had not 
even removed his boots. His gratitude to Ann Pid- 
duck was appreciably lessened as he remembered that 
she had not thought to take them off for him. To 
put a man in her bed with his boots on ! That was, to 
say the least of it, distasteful. It was sufficiently 
against the grain of his physical and mental habits to 
send his thoughts flying back to the life he had left, 
but they were caught in the mists of the excitement 
172 


MITCHAM MEWS 


and pain through which he had passed, and he relapsed 
into an insensate pondering, forgot his breakfast, his 
surroundings, and sat unheeding through the day, until 
Ann returned in the evening. She brought flowers. 

“Well, of all the ” she cried. “I did think you’d 

have cleared away. Why, you haven’t touched your 
breakfast. Haven’t you been out ?” 

He had not exactly forgotten her. Indeed, he had 
been awaiting her coming, but now he was puzzled 
because her return was so expected, and it ought to 
have been unexpected. He felt injured, that he had 
been cheated, that things on this side of his crisis were 
too much like things on the other side : a woman, habit, 
meals, interest in his appetite. 

“Wake up, stoopid,” said Ann. “You’ll be wasting 
off like the niggers in Africa if you don’t wake up. 
You can’t go sleeping on forever.” 

“Can’t I?” 

“Well, you can, of course, but if you do, I’ll be 
thinking you’re a case. You’re not a case, are you? 
You weren’t last night.” 

She spoke as though to be called a case was the 
horridest of insults, and he took it as such and roused 
himself not to deserve it. 

“That’s better,” she said. “Nothing to eat all day.” 

“No. Nothing.” 

She pondered that. 

“I expect your stomach knows best. Now, then, stir 
yourself. You got to write home.” 

She gave him writing materials and he drew up to 
the table and sat staring at the blank sheet of paper. 
173 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He took pen in hand, but could not write, could not 
concentrate his will even that much. 

“What am I to say?” he asked. 

“Don’t you know ?” 

“No.” 

“Well, I’m blowed! If you aren’t the funniest. . . . 
It’s to your wife! Don’t you know what to say to 
your wife?” 

He wrote : 

“Dear Linda ” 

Then he thought of Linda in a friendly, distant 
fashion, as someone charming and taking whom he had 
known, of whom it was pleasant to think. 

“Dear Linda, Linda Brock, Lin ” 

Ann saw his hesitation, and suggested : 

“You want your clothes.” 

He wrote down : 

“I want my clothes. I don’t think I want my books. 
You can sell the car. You gave me a nice picture once 
by some German. I think I should like you to send 
that. I have been walking about London. It is very 
wonderful. A railway porter was nice to me, and 
there are other friendly people.” 

He stopped. Ann said : 

“The address is 6 Mitcham Mews, West Kensing- 
ton.” 

He wrote that down. There was something else he 
wanted to say, but he could not fix in his mind a suffi- 
cient image of Linda to be able to write to her. So he 
gave it up presently and only added : “That’s all,” and 
his signature. 


174 


MITCHAM MEWS 


The letter was addressed and stamped, and Ann, still 
limping, took it to the post. 

When she returned, she said : 

“I’ve fixed you up. You’re to sleep with Jimmy at 
No. io until your things come, and then we’ll begin 
to think. You’re not much use to anybody now, are 
you ?” t 

“No,” said he. Then he began to stammer out an 
apology. 

“Silly,” said Ann. “Just a lost boy, that’s what you 
are. Lucky for you it was me and not the police found 
you. They’d have sent you back where you came 
from.” She saw that it was useless to joke with Rene 
and soon dropped her bantering tone. She took him 
for a walk round the houses, and was delighted when 
he remembered that he must have a clean collar and a 
toothbrush ; a return to grace, or sense. 

“Oh! I’d be sorry now if it wasn’t true, and you 
went back.” 

“I shan’t go back.” 

Her question, the necessity of responding to her 
spontaneity, brought back in a sudden flood his will, 
and he had a quick pleasure in feeling the air upon his 
face and seeing the evening color of the streets. 

“No. I shan’t go back. People can’t go back. But 
my father went back.” * 

“Why did you say that?” 

“What did I say?” 

“ 'But my father went back.’ ” 

“Did I ? I didn’t know I said that. I didn’t know I 
even thought of him.” 


175 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I know,” said Ann. “It’s like suddenly finding 
yourself talking aloud. And don’t you feel a fool if 
there’s anybody listening?” 

They bought collar, toothbrush, pajamas, and a red 
sausage for supper. With these they returned to 
Mitcham Mews and had to wait up until Jimmy at 
No. io turned up. He did so about one o’clock, a 
strange figure strutting up the mews, beaming all over 
his face, and humming : 

Can you see me, gray eyes, 

Hiding in the tree, 

Waiting for the moonrise? 

Gray eyes, look at me, 

In the apple-tree. 

Apple-tree, apple-tree. 

He had on a mortar-board cap, a white collar reach- 
ing up to his ears, an enormous black bow tie, a red 
satin waistcoat hung with chains, and his face was 
blacked except for one eye and a quarter of an inch 
all round his mouth. He carried a banjo. As he saw 
Ann he drew his hand across the strings and croaked 
out in a hoarse voice : 

“Give us a kiss, old dear, I’m that hellish dry.” 

“Oh, go on. You got to behave yourself now, 
Jimmy, now you got a lodger.” 

“Like old times,” said Jimmy. “ Ma had lodgers. 
What Ma didn’t know about lodgers ” 

“Give it a rest,” said Ann. “Do keep off the comic 
for a bit. Mr. Fourmy wants to get to bed. So do I, 
and you’ll have the neighbors up, the way voices go 
ringing up the mews. Good night.” 

176 


MITCHAM MEWS 


She turned away. 

"Good night, old gal,” said Jimmy, and he led Rene 
up the stairs of No. io. "Good sort, that gal. Likes 
her bit o’ fun same as any gal, but she’s a tiddler, she 
is. Independent ! I don’t fink. Gals look arter their- 
selves nowadays. Cos why ? Cos they’re three to one. 
We don’t go round, us men. What a awful thought! 

There’s your bed, Mr. What’s your name? 

’Ardly a gent’s bed, but you can lie on it, and what 
more can be said of any bed?” 

He went into the inner room and began undressing, 
talking all the while, explaining that minstrelsy was 
only one of his professions, that he had had a rotten 
day, not a smile in the world; that he wouldn’t try 
again for a week, not if he starved; that Mr. Fourmy 
must be prepared for a shock when he saw him with- 
out his black, as it made such a difference, and that 
there was a silver lining to every cloud. He got into 
bed without removing his black, for Rene heard no 
sound of water, and talked himself to sleep. . . . Rene 
lay sleepless, this third night of his adventure, and 
rejoiced as one who had awakened from a long and 
painful dream. Jimmy amused him, Ann amused him, 
and all amusement was new to him. 

Jimmy woke up talking, ran out in nightshirt and 
trousers, and returned with a jug of beer and a loaf of 
bread. That was breakfast. He sat on Rene’s bed and 
they consumed their fare together. 

"Gardening to-day,” said Jimmy. "Ladies all want 
their gardens dug up these days. I got two or three 
1 77 


YOUNG EARNEST 


gardens. They call me Gardener, though I ain’t no 
blooming gardener. ‘D’you think sweet peas will do 
in the smoke, gardener?’ they say. I dunno, but I 
sticks ’em all in. They gets it all out of a book, and 
what’s good enough for them is good enough for me. 
Gardener! Well, here’s luck!” 

And Rene said : “Here’s luck !” 

When he was washed, Jimmy appeared as a sandy- 
haired man with a fuchsia-colored face, fattish, shape- 
less, with little twinkling, blinking eyes. Round and 
ball-like his head was, round and ball-like his body, and 
he bounced in all his movements. He was grotesque, 
but not so grotesque as the idea Rene had of him, the 
idea which haunted him as he sat alone in the scantily- 
furnished room, with no desire to go out or to claim 
with the world any relationship but those which chance 
had thrown his way, with Ann and the minstrel-gar- 
dener. He spent many hours gazing out of the win- 
dow at the children playing in the litter and adding to 
it. There were swarms of children; little girls in 
charge of babies, not so very much smaller than them- 
selves; boys tirelessly passing from one game to an- 
other, stopping only when a car came up the mews 
or was brought out to be sluiced down or oiled. There 
were one or two men who sat all day as listless as 
himself. They smoked, chewed straws, occasionally 
talked, disappeared at intervals round the corner, but 
returned to smoke, chew straws, and talk occasionally. 
They were unconcerned, inattentive, and unmoved. 
Rene saw one of them earn a coin of some sort by 
holding a tool for a chauffeur while he groped in his 
178 


MITCHAM MEWS 


engine. There were women who sat in the windows 
for hours together, gazing out with unseeing eyes; 
other women who stood in the doors and talked. One 
young woman in the evening came and stood in a door- 
way with a baby in her arms. The light had grown 
very soft. It fell upon her, and surrounded her with 
an atmosphere that gave her beauty. Rene’s eyes rest- 
ed on her gladly, but without conscious appreciation. 
Then, very slowly, he began to see something that ap- 
pealed to him and accounted for her fascination : the 
line T>f her body drooping under the weight of the 
child in her arms, her whole body one unconscious, 
comforting caress of protection. While she stood there 
Rene saw nothing else, and he watched her until the 
light faded and she disappeared, slipped away like a 
vision, into the darkness. Somehow he felt that his 
day had not been in vain. 

Ann came to inspect his quarters and to take him 
out. He was very happy to see her, and she seemed to 
feel it, for she said : 

“I knew you’d be better to-day. A good night’s rest. 
That’s what you wanted. But I was afraid Jimmy 
would keep you up with his nonsense.” 

“He made me laugh,” said Rene. 

She gave a little crow of pleasure : 

“Good old Jimmy!” she cried. 

Then she asked him had he seen anyone that day, 
and he described some of the people he had seen. As 
he described she told histories, so that presently for 
Rene Mitcham Mews seemed a place bursting with hu- 
man energy, passions, disasters, jokes, follies, and 
179 


YOUNG EARNEST 


frailties — just the sort of place he had been seeking. 
There was Old Lunt, who sold ballads and wrote let- 
ters for the people who had never learned to write; 
there was Maggie, who went out as a midwife to keep 
the families of her two daughters; Bellfield the furni- 
ture-remover, who had a strange young man come to 
see him sometimes, who was like no one else in the 
world ; Mr. Martin, who used to keep the livery at the 
end of the mews and had now gone in for taxicabs; 
Fat Bessie, who went out charring and had an idiot son 
to whom her whole life was devoted; Billy and Click, 
who were wrong ’uns, dirty wrong ’uns, but too clever 
to be caught, though they would be one day. 

“A bright lot,” said Ann. “And then, of course, 
there’s me — and you. They’ll laugh at you at first. 
They laugh at everything and everybody new. But 
you mustn’t mind that. They’ll borrow money from 
you, but don’t you never lend them more than six- 
pence, if it’s Maggie or Bessie; twopence if it’s any of 
the men.” 

“And who,” asked Rene, “is the girl with the 
baby?” 

“Oh, that’s Rita. Baby? She’s got four, and an- 
other coming. She’s all right. Bit washed out with 
it. Makes her stupid and sly. But she’s all right, and 
Joe’s a good sort. One o’ them as is always in and 
out of work. I dunno why. I think he’s the sort as 
can’t work with a beast above him. ’Lectrician. If 
you want a feller to talk, he’s the one.” 

“I think your talk’s about as good as I could have, 
Ann.” 

180 


MITCHAM MEWS 


Her face lighted up. 

“Is it? I am glad. Ooh! It is nice to have you 
call me that. D’you know, I couldn’t stop thinking of 
you all day long. And it didn’t stop me working 
neither. I did best day I’ve done for a long time.” 

“And all day long I looked out of the window.” 


Ill 


MR. MARTIN 

The innocencie that is in me is a kinde of simple-plaine 
innocencie without vigor or art. 

rTIHE.next morning brought a letter from Professor 
Smallman : 

“My dear Fourmy, — My first impulse was to come down 
and implore you to return, to think of your career, or, if 
you are incapable of doing that, of us, to whom your career 
and, I may say, your happiness, are things of some moment. 
Linda forbade me to do that. She is well, but shows signs 
of strain. Frankly, I can understand neither of you. Bit- 
terness, grievances keep men and women apart, but neither 
of these is in her. She alarms me. She seems to me to be 
grappling with an emotional situation with her intellect. 
That seems to me to be dangerous. She said of you : ‘His 
Intellect only comes into play when he is emotionally sure/ 
and gave me that, which I do not pretend to understand, 
as a reason for letting you go your way. I cannot do that 
without protest. She says : ‘Men and women have the right 
to adjust their own difficulties and repair their own mis- 
takes without reference to outside opinion, or, indeed, out- 
side affection.’ I cannot agree. My feeling is all against 
it. When a man and woman marry, they create a social 
entity which they are not entitled to destroy without con- 
sulting society. That is putting it at its very lowest, with- 

182 


MR. MARTIN 


out thinking for a moment of the spiritual entity which 
marriage creates. You two seem to have agreed to dis- 
regard that ” 

Rene read no more. The old exasperation that the 
well-meaning Smallman had roused in him surged 
through him now, and he took pen and paper and 
wrote : 

“My dear, good, kindly Idiot, — When no spiritual entity 
is created, then no social entity is created; nothing is 
created but an amorphous relationship which is hostile to 
society, and such relationships it is the duty of decent peo- 
ple to avoid and to destroy. Nothing is created, and if by 
good luck the calamity of having children is averted, then 
there is nothing to destroy; then those who are apart in 
fact are better also apart in appearance/’ 

So, with a startling suddenness he was driven to a 
conclusion, and knew that, come what might, he w T ould 
abide by it. What Smallman had said of Linda 
strengthened him, gave him a clearer idea of her than 
he had ever had, an idea, moreover, in which with 
heart and mind he could rejoice. There was fight in 
her, too. 

He took up the Professor’s letter once more. It was 
rather a good letter, ably setting out everything to be 
considered, the various interests that would be injured 
— relations, friends, the university, the little commu- 
nity of cultured persons who would be delivered up to 
coarse, commercial Thrigsby and its tongues. Clearly 
Smallman’s dread was lest all these interests should be 
drawn down in the wreck of the young couple’s mar- 

183 


YOUNG EARNEST 


riage, and Rene could shudder and sympathize at the 
suffering and distress he might be causing. His reso- 
lution weakened a little until he thought of Linda, and 
then he said : 

“But we are saving ourselves. The marriage goes 
to hell or we do. They can’t have both.” 

Smallman’s letter ended with a sentence worth the 
whole of the rest. It was as though he had written 
himself into something near imaginative perception 
and true friendship : 

“But, my dear fellow, if you are resolved to continue 
in this blind and cruel folly, I can only pray and hope 
that the tragic trial it must be may make a man of 
you. Though you may be lost to us, I will pray, I be- 
lieve in you enough to think, that you will not be alto- 
gether lost.” 

Rene tore up his first indignant note, and wrote an- 
other, saying how much he appreciated the friendship 
and affection, how it had become impossible to turn 
back, and how it pleased him to know that between 
himself and those who had been his friends there 
would be the separation of circumstance, not that of 
enmity and bitterness. 

This done, he posted his reply and wired to his bank 
in Thrigsby to find out how much money he pos- 
sessed. 

He received the answer later when he was with Ann 
at tea : Fifty-five pounds. 

“Je-rusalem !” she cried. 

“I spent very little,” he explained, “and my wife had 
seven hundred a year.” 


184 


MR. MARTIN 


“Seven hundred!” She was scared. “Seven hun- 
dred! And you chucked that to come and live in 
Mitcham Mews ! Well, no wonder they say the world’s 
going balmy.” 

She was both relieved and awed by his vast wealth, 
and allowed him to take her to a music-hall, where her 
pleasure brimmed over so that he could share it. 

The fifty-five pounds changed her attitude toward 
him somewhat, made her more sure of him, relieved 
her, perhaps, of anxiety. She lost the nervous dis- 
comfort that had shown itself in deference toward 
him, and she could now consider him as a practical 
proposition and no longer as the delightful but alarm- 
ing perplexity he had been. She had time to breathe, 
to let things go their own way, until it became neces- 
sary to do something. She asked him questions about 
his old life to discover any talent or capacity that might 
be turned to account. 

“If the worst comes to the worst,” she said, “I 
could teach you the paper flowers. You could do a lot 
in the daytime, and I’m sure we could sell most of 
them.” 

He was quite prepared to make paper flowers. He 
was so fascinated by her capacity for the rough busi- 
ness of living and for extracting enjoyment out 
of almost everything she touched, that he was her 
admiring pupil, to be and do anything she might 
expect. 

At the music-hall a comedian had made the audience 
scream with laughter by his antic burlesque of a mo- 

185 


YOUNG EARNEST 


torist. Rene was amused, but never smiled. Ann 
turned to him in some distress and said: 

“Don’t you think it’s funny?” 

She had laughed till the tears were streaming down 
her cheeks. 

“It’s quite funny, but so old-fashioned. Cars don’t 
break down like that now. I have driven hundreds of 
miles and never been stopped on the road.” 

“Oh, did you drive a car?” 

“Yes. A little one.” 

“Then we’ll go and see Mr. Martin.” 

And with this suggestion also he complied. 

At the other end the mews were approached by a 
wide street flanked by little houses which were let off 
in flats and rooms; two flats of four rooms in each 
house. Mr. Martin lived in the last house, had always 
lived there since the houses were built, because it was 
next to his livery stables and convenient, for he had so 
much flesh to carry that he carried it as little as pos- 
sible. He rose early in the morning and rolled into 
the glass office in his yard, where there were still two 
horses, a victoria, and a closed carriage, which he kept, 
partly because he could not bear to be without a horse, 
and partly because he still had some small business 
with old ladies and gentlemen of his former connec- 
tion who disliked motors, or could not conceive of 
ceremonious visiting except in a horse-drawn vehicle. 
Besides, he had three taxicabs, and had drifted into a 
trade in accessories and sundries with the chauffeurs 
in the mews, the nearest garage being half a mile away 
1 86 


MR. MARTIN 


and beyond their walking distance. He knew everyone 
in the mews, and everyone liked him, and as he sat 
in his office all day long he had a succession of visi- 
tors. A groom and a boy composed his staff, and the 
boy was mostly away on errands for Mr. Martin’s 
housekeeping, because he would not admit any woman 
to his house. Such cleaning as it got was done by 
the groom. Not that Martin disliked women; he was 
fond of them, but he was afraid of them. 

“Let ’em set foot in your house,” he used to say,, 
“and they’ll stay. Once let ’em start doing for you 
and they do for you altogether.” 

(He had been married to an extraordinarily capable 
woman and could not endure a sloven.) 

Ann he had known since she was a child, when he 
had caught her in bravado stealing a horseshoe “for 
luck” out of his yard. And he had carried her and 
her booty into his house to show his wife the little girl 
who was braver than the boys who had egged her on 
to do it; for the boys had scuttled away on his ap- 
proach. Then his wife had tied the horseshoe up with 
a pink ribbon and sent proud Ann away with it and a 
halfpenny, and permission to visit the yard whenever 
she liked. And when Mrs. Martin died and for a 
whole week the fat man sat in his house and mourned, 
Ann was the first to visit him and bring him out of the 
lethargy that had come upon him. Later, when the 
livery business went into a galloping consumption, it 
was in talk with Ann that Mr. Martin plucked up his 
energy to use his yard, of which he possessed the 
freehold, for a taxicab business. 

187 


YOUNG EARNEST 


She had told him about Rene, who received a warm 
welcome when she took him into the office one evening. 
The very geniality of his reception made Rene shy, and 
the old fellow put him to such a shrewd scrutiny that 
he felt he was being weighed up and measured in his 
worthiness of friendship with Ann. 

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” wheezed Mr. Martin. 
“Any friend of hers is a friend of mine.” Then he 
came to business. He knew nothing of motor-cars 
himself, but the cab business needed likely young fel- 
lers, different kind of feller from ’orses ; they needed 
’ands and a heart to understand, something special, an 
inborn gift. “Lookin’ at you, I should say you didn’t 
’ave it. But motors, well, that’s a thing you can learn. 
A motor can’t take a dislike to you same as a ’orse, and, 
likewise, a motor can’t take a fancy to you and work 
’is ’eart out for you, same as a ’orse. I’ve ’ad ’orses, 
if you’ll believe me, as it’s been a honor to drive, and 
I’ve never ’ad a ’orse as could abide Mrs. Martin, God 
bless ’er ! It was a great grief to me, that was.” 

Rene had been primed with the wonders of Mrs. 
Martin and Ann had told him the story of the 
horseshoe, and he was able to sympathize and 
show his sympathy. He set his case before Mr. 
Martin. 

“ ’Tain’t many men,” said the livery-keeper, “as 
turns from books to work. ’Tain’t many as can. I 
seen many a good man go wrong through books — dis- 
contented, uppish, faddy, nothin’ good enough. But 
they was mostly too old or middle-aged. When a 
man gets idees, there’s nothin’ to be done with him. 

1 88 


MR. MARTIN 


That’s my experience, and I been sitting here these 
forty years. But perhaps you’re young enough.” 

“Young enough to try, anyhow,” said Rene, and 
that brought the old man back to the affair of the 
moment. He had a new car on order, and when it 
arrived it would be given to Casey, and then Rene 
could have Casey’s machine, a Renault. In the mean- 
time, it would be necessary for him to study up the 
knowledge of London preparatory to taking out his 
license. Casey would tell him all about that, and if he 
liked he could come into the office and help with the 
books and the accessories and earn fifteen shillings a 
week. He closed with that, and arranged to begin the 
next day, coming very early in the morning so that he 
could meet Casey.” 

“I do hope you’ll like it,” said Ann, as they walked 
away. 

“I’m sure I shall,” said he. “I like the old fellow, 
and I must do something, and that’s better than black- 
ing my face and gardening.” 

She laughed. 

“It does seem queer, after all your book-learning.” 

“When I look back on it, my dear Ann, I can only 
remember reading one book with pleasure after I was 
a child and did everything with pleasure.” 

“What book was that?” 

“It was an anthology. Something like this was in it : 

"And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
That shadowy thought can win, 

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, 

To let the warm love in.’” 

189 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“That’s pretty,” said Ann Pidduck. “There are 
pretty things in books, though I never read them.” 

Said he: 

“I never had the feeling of it until now. I think 
something went wrong with me that I couldn’t feel.” 

“But you must have, to suffer like you did and run 
away.” 

“I’m beginning to think that I ran away because I 
couldn’t feel, but only melt into a sort of exasperated 
heat.” 

“But that’s like when you lie awake when you’re 
very young and fancy no one wants you, and simply 
long for someone to want you very much. Oh, you 
do make me go on.” 

“I’m glad you do, Ann. I’m glad you do.” 

“I dunno ” she seemed to protest. 

“You must let me say that because I never had such 
a friend as you.” 

“Oh! Oh! The world seems all upside down. I 
oughtn’t to. I oughtn’t to be friends, because you are 
different. You know you are. It isn’t the same. It 
isn’t like having a bit o’ fun, and since you came, I’m 
off my bit o’ fun.” 

He caught her hands, and in the confused emotion 
that had seized him, tried to kiss her; but she broke 
away and ran up the mews, leaving him standing under 
the lamp in the archway. He did not move. He was 
filled with a sweet, healing tenderness that soothed his 
trouble and made him feel curiously and happily sure 
of himself, and his mind flew back to the book from 
which he had quoted, and to all the associations it had 
190 


MR. MARTIN 


brought in its train. And he had lost the uncomfort- 
able sense of a violent change in his life, and began to 
perceive the inevitability of good and bad, hope and 
despond, driving him on to adventure and through 
adventure to appreciation of the mere fact of living, 
so that the things that happened were almost without 
significance. No longer did he have any dread of his 
fate; up or down, it was no great matter; a certain 
kind of agony it was impossible, it was vile and de- 
grading to bear; a certain kind of happiness it was 
worth any suffering, any bewilderment to find. And 
yet happiness was hardly the word for it. Happiness 
was associated in his mind with being content, settled 
down, established, a part of surrounding circum- 
stances, without reaction. This that he was beginning 
to perceive necessitated effort and will, fierce endeavor 
without ceasing. For an image of it he could find 
nothing better than tearing about the country with 
Kurt. Only that was aimless, containing nothing but 
the pleasure of the moment and the risk of disaster. 
The conception germinating in his mind had all the 
swiftness and the peril, but it had also immense pur- 
pose, irresistible force, and he said aloud : 

“Force! Huge force, gripping you, holding you, 
bearing you on to its purpose which is also your own, 
so that always you are sure, always stronger than 
yourself.” 

Out of the dark archway came a voice, saying : 

“A philosopher in the slums.’’ 

Rene started, and groped back to the world of the 
senses. A tall thin figure loomed up in front of him, 
191 


YOUNG EARNEST 


and a pale, eager face with a jutting nose and large 
eyes smiled at him. 

“Kilner, my name,” said the owner of it. “I’ve no- 
ticed you, walking about in a hungry dream. Down 
on your luck? So am I. Best of luck in a way. 
When the world doesn’t want you, it gives you time 
to look at it and think about it, and discover that it is 
really good. Otherwise you have to take so much on 
hearsay, and then of course you are not entitled to 
have an opinion about it, much less any feeling.” 

“I was just beginning to feel extraordinarily happy 
about it all, though I have come to grief, and am a 
source of great anxiety to my friends.” 

“Friends? They never want anything but one’s 
external comfort. They will dine with you, walk with 
you, talk with you, sleep with you, but think with you, 
feel with you, they will not. It’s not their, fault. They 
don’t want to be anything but charming. We who 
want charm only with truth find ourselves in trouble 
in no time at all. What did you try to do ?” 

“I got married.” 

“Oh ! Is that all ? I thought you must be a painter ‘ 
or a writer or — I’m a painter. But I can’t sell a damn 
thing, so I work for a furniture-dealer until I’ve saved 
enough to keep me going for a few months. Come up 
and talk.” 

They went up to No. 16. Kilner produced ciga- 
rettes and continued : 

“I’d have bet any amount you were an out-of-work 
writer, or a young man slung out of a respectable 
house for reading poetry in church. You don’t look 
192 


MR. MARTIN 


like the sort of fool who gets messed up by women, 
though almost any man is that kind of fool. ,, 

Rene tried to protest against that, and to point out 
that he had been married and therefore serious in his 
folly, if folly it were. Kilner only grunted at him. 

“H’m!” he said. “Looks as if you’d been in the 
habit of taking things seriously simply because they 
happened to yourself. That’s idiotic. Most things 
that happen are dirty little jokes, opportunities fum- 
bled because one isn’t fit to handle them, or situations 
forced out of greed or conceit, or injured vanity, or 
mere pigheadedness. There are divine things happen : 
doing a good bit of drawing is one of them, finding a 
friend is another, falling in love is another. Those 
things happen simply because you can’t help doing 
them, because you’d die one of many deaths if you 
didn’t. Once you’ve done one of those things, nothing 
else matters. You have something in you that you 
must keep alive. Let the others make the world hide- 
ous and vulgar and untidy. It is not your affair. If 
they won’t or can’t love what you love, then they are 
not for you and you are not for them. Don’t you 
think ?” 

Rene could find nothing to say. He found it so ab- 
sorbing to watch Kilner, to listen to his monologue 
delivered in a voice of wonderful sweetness that 
seemed always to be trembling into laughter. The 
zest, the humor of the man thrilled through him, and 
made him feel that all his life was full of promise, 
rich and ripe with romance. 

Kilner began to tell him about painting and painters, 

193 


YOUNG EARNEST 

about Rembrandt and Van Eyck and Cranach, happy 
Cranach who could paint women without being either 
sensual or sentimental, and Diirer and Holbein and 
della Francesca, and how he himself, the son of a 
mason in Buckinghamshire, had always painted, at first 
without taste and without purpose, from sheer delight 
in objects, their form and their color, and how little 
by little he had learned to see the beauty shining 
through them and to wish to have that beauty also 
shining through his pictures and drawings. And how 
he had come to London to learn his art, financed by 
rich people near his home; and how he had assumed 
that every man who touched brush and paint had also 
desired to render the shining beauty that used all 
things for its dwelling-place ; and how incidentally he 
had suffered from arrogance and blown vanity, though 
never losing sight of his one object; and how he had 
been taught a certain kind of drawing, to be accurate 
in imitation, and then again accurate and again accu- 
rate ; and how he had quarreled with those of his teach- 
ers who had wished him not to use the power of accu- 
racy they taught him, but to regard it as in itself an 
end; quarreled with his fellow-students, with his pa- 
trons, with his family, with exhibiting societies, with 
— apparently — everybody, because he could not learn 
to keep his opinions to himself or conceive that men 
who painted vilely with constant sacrifice of beauty to 
their desire to please, did so because that was how they 
saw things and how they liked things and loved them 
so far as they could love at all. And he told Rene of 
many love affairs he had had, some casual, some un- 
194 


MR. MARTIN 


happy and desperate, some light-hearted and gay, and 
one ecstatic though it had lasted only for five weeks in 
spring. He described with a vivid power how he and 
she lay in the grass in Richmond Park and the soft air 
above them was alive with light, quivering up to the 
blue where the clouds swam and slowly faded out of 
form and being and other clouds came ; and near them 
was an almond-tree in blossom, and above. them shone 
the gummy buds of the beeches ; crisp to the touch was 
the grass, moist and cool was the earth. And he 
touched her white arm and she trembled. He trem- 
bled too. And she turned her face toward him with a 
sweet trouble and wonder in her eyes and they kissed. 

“That ended in tears, my tears and hers. I was too 
coarse for her, I think; too violent. She was very 
delicate and beautiful.” 

After a long silence, Rene said : 

“I have had nothing in my life but foolishness.” 

“There’s no harm in that,” said Kilner. “It’s bit- 
terness that kills. When shall I see you again?” 

“Do you want to?” Rene was startled into asking. 

“Of course. I don’t let a friend slip when I’ve 
found one.” 

And gladly Rene said : 

“A friend. I begin work to-morrow at old Mar- 
tin’s.” 

“There’s a man,” answered Kilner. “I must paint 
his heavy, happy face. It’s the kind of face there 
won’t be again. The world’s changing. Man wants 
but little here below? Never again. We want all 
there is.” 


195 


IV 


LEARNING A TRADE 

Tis my vocation, ’tis no sin for a man to labor in his 
vocation. 

F OR some weeks our adventurer divided his time 
between working in Mr. Martin’s yard and office, 
studying the map of London, and being driven about 
the city in a car of instruction with seven or eight 
other aspirants to the taxi-driving profession. Most 
of them were depressed and bored, smoked incessantly, 
and spoke little, but every now and then Rene would 
find one to talk to him and take pity on his gentility 
and give him advice and consolation. The drives 
would begin cheerfully enough, often with excitement 
and humor, but soon listlessness would creep over the 
party, the more sober individuals would produce maps 
and notebooks, while the younger would conceitedly 
assume that their knowledge could not be enlarged, or 
perhaps they were ashamed to be caught out in igno- 
rance. On the whole, they made Rene unhappy, for 
most of them were drifting so helplessly and with such 
dull indifference. By contrast the energy, the power, 
and richness of London streets were almost appalling. 
He would return home exhausted and confused, and, 
196 


LEARNING A TRADE 


to avoid thought, would go on with his map, taking 
Hyde Park Corner, Oxford Circus, and the Bank as 
the centers of three circles into which he had divided 
the city of his future operations. He found it easy to 
memorize the thoroughfares that connected them and 
their dependent roads. He had observed that certain 
districts were devoid of cabs or cab-ranks, and mark- 
ing these districts off on his map, he concentrated upon 
the rest. The cabs served to connect one moneyed 
region with another, and with the stations and places 
of business and pleasure. And he selected the mon- 
eyed district where he would begin when he had his 
cab. 

Casey was a Liverpool Irishman who had begun life 
as a clerk in a shipping office and had then, at twenty- 
seven, revolted and gone out to South Africa to work 
in the mines until one of his lungs gave out. Then 
he came home and had a nasty time in London in an 
office until he was told by a doctor that he must find 
some outdoor occupation. With the little money he 
had left, he had learned how to drive and repair a car, 
had been with one of the big companies for some time ; 
then married a niece of old Martin’s and thought he 
could do better by working for him on a profit-sharing 
basis. That was Rene’s arrangement; he was given 
the alternative of buying his car on the hire-purchase 
system and using the yard as a garage, but on Casey’s 
advice chose the first proposition. Casey said it was 
better, because you needed capital to stand the heavy 
wear and tear of a car in constant use in London traf- 
fic. That settled, Casey took his novice out in the 
197 


YOUNG EARNEST 


early morning to satisfy himself that the car would 
not suffer at his Hnds. He was delighted with the 
way the machine was handled. Rene, too, was pleased. 
He had been rather nervous at the thought of driving 
a more powerful engine than that to which he had 
been accustomed; but the greater power was only an 
added pleasure and no difficulty. 

He took out his license and received a number and a 
number-plate, joined the union, bought a thick green 
suit that buttoned up to his neck, shiny leggings, and a 
peaked cap; a waterproof overall, enormous gloves, a 
leather purse, a rug. Then on a day early in the au- 
tumn he drove his car out of the mews and plunged 
into the eastward stream of traffic. He had not gone 
above a hundred yards when he was hailed by a gen- 
tleman in tail-coat and top-hat carrying a red brief- 
bag. Drawing up by the curb, he flung back his arm 
and opened the door as he had seen drivers do, and 
received the one word : Temple. 

Absurdly hoping that he would be seen by no one 
who knew him, and feeling that the eyes of the occu- 
pant of the car were boring into the back of his neck, 
he drove to the Temple, and there received more exact 
directions from the gentleman, who poked his head out 
of the window, until they stopped outside a doorway 
with steps covered with the leaves of a plane-tree. The 
gentleman got out : 

“You forgot to put down your flag.” 

Rene started and blushed. So he had ! 

“The fare’s half a crown.” 

“Thank you, . . . sir.” 

198 


LEARNING A TRADE 

He was given two and nine. His first tip ! Three- 
pence. 

It was a busy day. He had only half an hour to wait 
on the stand which he had chosen for his headquarters. 
He drove home at night worn out and sleepy. 

The excitement did not last. Very soon, he hardly 
noticed his fares ; a stick or an umbrella raised in the 
street, a whistle blown by a servant, and off he sped, 
shipped his freight, and discharged it uninterested. 
From his district in the morning the gentlemen went 
to their business ; later in the day their ladies went to 
the shops ; in the evening both went about their pleas- 
ures. Occasionally he was taken out to the suburbs, 
far west or north, but for the most part it was routine 
work, varied in the evenings, sometimes, with the con- 
veyance of brilliantly-attired young men and women 
from a restaurant to a theater in the West End, or of 
dubious couples to dubious habitations. 

And he was happy. The monotony was a relief. It 
never ceased to be a source of pride to him to keep the 
paint and brass of his car gleaming and his engine 
sweet and in tune. Always it was a delight to him at 
night, when the traffic was abated, to let the throttle 
open and send the car spinning and humming over the 
shining streets. If he lost interest in his fares, he 
never weakened in his joy in the streets with their 
color and activity, as changing as the sky or as the 
water in the river, their music swelling through the 
day, to almost every hour its individual harmony, a 
music growing and falling with the seasons: vigor 
199 


YOUNG EARNEST 


and hope in October; in the winter a humorous des- 
peration out of which grew miraculously the spring, 
and that again was lost in the maddening rout of June 
and then the slackness and the excited pleasure-hunt- 
ing of the summer months when the genius of the city 
flees before the horde of aliens and visitors who come 
to gape and peer and see the sights. He was happy, 
and most of all he loved his independence, to be free of 
organization of any kind. Company? The car was 
company. He and it worked together. Here was no 
uncertainty, no fumbling. The day's work was marked 
out and must be well done. There was always satis- 
faction in it and never compromise, never the sense 
of being driven on by some obscure and undirected 
energy other than his own that had so often overcome 
him in Thrigsby. And because his mind and body 
were engaged in the discipline of skilled work, his 
intellect, his imagination began to grow, to reach out, 
to desire to use their powers upon all that he observed 
and thought and felt. A little joy grew in him slowly 
and brought him at first to a dreaming, wistful mood 
wherein desires expanded of which he did not begin 
to be conscious until spring airs stirred in London. 

Through the winter the habit of labor and his pride 
in it brought him slowly nearer to understanding of 
Ann Pidduck and her absorption in fun. He began to 
share her pleasure in relaxation. She taught him to 
dance, and they attended shilling balls together and she 
communicated to him her Cockney pleasure in the 
streets, the prowling in the lighted thoroughfares, the 
making of chance acquaintances, the full gusto of 


200 


LEARNING A TRADE 


broad jests. He introduced her to Kilner and tried to 
make her include him in their intimacy and their 
jaunts ; but she seemed to be scared of the artist, and 
when Rene appeared with him would make excuses of 
other engagements. 

Then there were evenings of talk with Kilner, Rene 
hardly listening to him but rejoicing in the vigor of 
his words. He was painting in his spare time and on 
Saturdays and Sundays, and through his pictures and 
the painter’s enthusiasm for things seen Rene learned 
to use his eyes. That was a slow process, too. Often 
he saw beautiful things and creatures that so moved 
him that he lost sight of them, and dwelt only in the 
emotion they had roused, falsifying his vision. He 
would constantly be overcome in that way when he 
tried to describe anything he had seen to his friend, 
who would then turn upon him and call him a bloody 
liar, and a sentimentalist, and a filthy spitter upon the 
world’s beauty, a crapulous cheat, trying to steal a 
winged joy and turn it into a selfish pleasure; and 
much more that was beyond Rene except that he 
would feel ashamed but also invigorated by being so 
fiercely flung back into humility. Kilner took him to 
the National Gallery and very carefully explained the 
difference between a real picture and a fraud. There 
were, according to him, very few real pictures. He 
talked Rene into a very pretty bewilderment from 
which his hours with Ann were a welcome relief. 
There everything was what it seemed, everybody was 
taken (more or less) at his or her own valuation; there 
was fun to be extracted from everything and every- 


201 


YOUNG EARNEST 


body, if only you approached them good-humoredly 
enough. And if you failed and did not find the ex- 
pected fun — Oh, well, try elsewhere. There are as 
good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. 

And then one morning Spring came to London. 
The black trees were powdered with green; the air 
was magical; the car was filled with a blithe new 
energy; the light gave the street and the things and 
people in them form and definiteness. Rene was up 
and out very early that morning to take a family to 
one of the stations. Three children were going away 
to the country. They beamed at him as though he 
were already a part of their coming delights. He 
laughed at them, and they said he was a nice funny 
driver, and was he coming to the country, too ? Uncle 
George had got a new calf which they would like him 
to see. When he had unloaded the happy party at the 
station — it was that at which he had arrived the year 
before — he caught sight of the hill at Highgate, like a 
green mountain towering above the long gray streets. 
He turned northward and sped out over the hills and 
far away. Here the trees were less advanced than in 
London, but their green was peeping, and in a field 
were ewes and lambs. He stopped his engine and 
stood by the fence and gazed at them. Two of the 
lambs were playing, running races backward and for- 
ward. In the sky there were little clouds, and they 
too seemed to be playing. He remembered words of 
Kilner’s: 

“Real seeing is through, not with, your eyes. Then 
you recognize that all things visible are within you as 


202 


LEARNING A TRADE 


well as without. Then the spirit in you sees the spirit 
shining in all things, and it is only the spirit that can 
really see.” 

And away up north was a black city, dark and hard 
and remorseless, from which he had escaped. The 
memory of it clung to him now and filled him with a 
stabbing terror that, though it could not rob him of 
his joy, could yet bring him to a new discontent, a 
hungry and almost angry desire. 

Back then he went to the city, and all day long 
busily plied his trade. To-day he closely observed all 
things. The wonder of the early morning was gone. 
He hated those who hired him, the insolent women and 
busy, indifferent men, for it seemed to him that they 
had destroyed it. Unconsciously he contrasted these 
people, who went so insensibly about their habitual 
stale employments, with the happy children going to 
the country. 

He was engaged to seek amusement with Ann that 
night. She was for the Pictures, but he persuaded her 
to go on the top of a bus to Kew. 

“But they’ve got the Miserables at the Pictures,” 
she said, “and they say it’s It.” 

“Look at the sky, my dear,” he protested. 

She looked at it. 

“Yes. It’s all right.” 

Usually now when he met her in the evening he 
kissed her, because she expected it. She had kissed 
him first when he had given her a present at Christ- 
mas, and thereafter it became their practice, com- 
radely. To-night he did not kiss her. He was stirred 
203 


YOUNG EARNEST 


at the sight of her; her friendliness, the bright greeting 
of her eyes thrust him back into himself and inwardly 
alarmed him. And she looked up at him and laughed 
mischievously, and swung her body from the hips up, 
and then moved slowly away from him, pouting her 
lips. 

“Would you like anywhere better than Kew?” he 
asked. 

“Wimbledon, where we saw the picture-actors. 
D’you remember ?” They boarded a bus and were 
swiftly borne out over the river, up through the holi- 
day town that had reminded him of Buxton, and out 
to the wide common. There they wandered. A thin 
moon came up. They passed whispering lovers, and 
men and women for whom that word was too great. 

Here again was spring, the first spring evening. 

Ann chattered, but Rene spoke never a word. Once 
she said: 

“Dull to-night, aren’t you? Are you tired?” 

Her questions met with so hard a silence that she 
too ceased to talk. 

She thought he must be offended with her, and as 
they returned she slipped her hand on his knee. He 
gripped her forearm, held it for a moment, then put 
her away from him. 

After a long while she said : 

“I didn’t know I’d made you angry.” 

“Angry? My dear child!” 

“What is it, then?” 

“This damned world. This morning I took three 
happy children to the country, and all day long I’ve 
204 


LEARNING A TRADE 


been at the beck and call of men and women who have 
lost the power and the will to be happy.” 

“I don’t know how you know. And you’re not very 
good at it yourself to-night, are you?” 

“How do I know ? Ask Kilner.” 

“That beast, Kilner.” 

“He’s my friend.” 

“He’s no friend of mine.” 

Then again he was silent. The thought of Kilner 
had made him just a little angry with her. With Kil- 
ner the day that had begun so beautifully might have 
come to a glorious and brave end. 

Presently she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder 
and said : 

“Don’t be cross. You’ll soon be dead, and it’s no 
good being cross. I do like being with you, really, 
even when we can’t have fun, and you go wasting 
your time thinking.” 

He turned, and their eyes met, and he astonished her 
by saying : 

“Ann, you don’t know how beautiful you are.” 

She gave a little cry on that, put out her hand, and 
this time he held it strongly clasped. They could be 
happy in their silence then. 

When they reached the mews she said she had sup- 
per in her room and he could come up if he liked. They 
ate and drank and were very merry, and it was late 
when he rose to go. He opened the door. She was at 
his side. 

“Good night, Ann.” 

“You needn’t go,” she whispered. 

205 


V 


TOGETHER 

Je vais ou le vent me mene 
Sans me plaindre ou m’effrayer. 

Je vais ou va toute chose, 

Ou va la feuille de rose 
Et la feuille de laurier ! 

A DAY or two later he moved his few belongings 
from Jimmy’s rooms to Ann’s. It was her 
wish. There was no point in concealment. The mews 
knew; the mews had expected it; the mews did not 
mind. Mr. Martin was delighted : 

“It’s what every young woman wants, to throw in 
her lot with some nice young feller. If they can’t be 
married, they can’t, and that’s all there is to it. Take 
mares now — Well, you know what I mean.” He 
caught the boy with his head in at the door listening, 
picked up a ledger, and threw it at him. A bad shot, 
it broke a pane in the glass wall. 

Rene had told him all the circumstances, because he 
knew that the mews was full of gossip, and he was 
attached enough to the old fellow to wish him to be in 
possession of the facts. 

“What I mean to say,” continued Mr. Martin, when 
206 


TOGETHER 


the boy had fled, “is this : If women must come ker- 
boosting into a man’s life, it’s better for them to come 
while he’s young and fool enough to enjoy it. There’s 
a time for everything, as the Bible says, but don’t let 
her put on you. The best of women will put on a man 
if he lets her, and that’s bad for both.” * 

That was the advice with which Rene Fourmy’s 
second venture in cohabitation was blessed. As usually 
happens with advice, he was too deeply engrossed in 
present interests to apply what wisdom it contained to 
his own case. He drifted down the stream of bliss 
they had tapped, and, as generously as she, brought 
into their common stock as much kindness, consider- 
ation, and warmth, excitement and curiosity as they 
needed to take them from moment to moment. Only 
he brought no laughter, of which she supplied abun- 
dance. Both were out early and all day long, and 
both returned in the evening tired but eager for the 
new wonder of each other’s company. Indeed it was 
wonderful, the easy sympathy they had for each other. 
They could be frank. She had no preconception of 
what love should be, and took all its delights simply as 
they came, and her simplicity fed and encouraged his. 
It was a novelty for him to live from day to day satis- 
fied; a kind of Paradise, if Paradise is a place where 
the appetites are a little overfed, so that body and 
mind are brought to indolence. 

Kilner had disappeared for a time, having made 
enough to be able to retire to his painting, and Rene 
had no other society than the chauffeurs in the shelters 
during the day and the familiars of Mitcham Mews in 
207 


YOUNG EARNEST 

the evening. He became sluggishly content to drift. 
He was making good money, increased by Ann’s earn- 
ings. If he ever thought of the old life in the North 
at all, it was with lazy contempt and indifference. His 
first attitude toward London was reversed. He had 
begun with all the northerner’s contempt for the easy 
ways of the metropolis. He never read anything but 
the newspaper, and every evening would read aloud 
the “fooltong” in the Star. Ann took it for the bet- 
ting. She put aside two shillings a week for “the 
horses,” and he joined her in that pursuit. He did 
not so much enjoy her pleasures as her zest for them, 
and it became his object to keep that alive. Without 
that he was at moments aware of a sickening sensa- 
tion that was truly horrible, making him gird at his 
surroundings, at certain tricks that Ann had, at hab- 
its, gestures, tones in her voice that were like his sister- 
in-law Elsie’s. He saw the resemblance first on re- 
ceiving a letter from his brother George: 

“Dear R, — A pal of mine who has been on the spree saw 
you in London the other day, says you drove him from the 
Troc to Bernard Street. I thought you’d have been off that 
long ago, but there’s no accounting for tastes. I meant to 
write some time since to say the old man has hopped it 
again, and the mother has taken up her quarters with us. 
It seems some money came in — I can’t make out where from 
— and he grabbed it and offed. It seems to have finished 
her; she’s shut up tight, sits and knits, toddles off to church 
whenever there’s a service, never mentions him or you. 
Elsie can’t get anything out of her, though they talk enough 
together. It makes the house seem full of women. I’ve 
never set eyes on you know who since you cleared. I’m 

208 


TOGETHER 


doing well enough, and hope to get something of my own 
in a few years, though small business don’t stand much 
chance in these days against the big combines. You’d be 
amazed at the huge joint warehouses they’re putting up 
now. Thrigby’s changing, and things are queer all round. 
People shift a bit now, what with the Colonies and all that. 
They don’t stay in offices like they used to do, only it doesn’t 
seem to make things any better for those who stay. Elsie 
sends her love; she always was a bit soft on you and didn’t 
mind a bit when you cleared. I only meant to tell you 
about the mother, thinking you ought to know. If ever I 
get to London I’ll look you up. — Thine, G. — Oh ! Kurt Brock 
has gone in for the aviation and is making quite a name for 
himself up here.” 

The letter took Rene back pleasantly in memory, 
when he was suddenly startled to find himself meeting 
George on his own ground, with complacent accept- 
ance of “having a good time,” as the one desirable ob- 
ject which could redeem the ever-present evil. And 
then he was compelled, from that footing, to see his 
own revolt as an unaccountable aberration, an eccen- 
tricity, an escapade unfortunately disastrous in its 
consequences. He did not like that, nor did he relish 
being coupled in George’s mind with his father, who 
was first indolent, then a vagabond, then irresponsible. 
His confidence was shaken, and he was made conscious 
of discrepancy and narrowly aware of having missed 
something of that which he set out to seek. Experi- 
ence had taught him that it was no use taking any 
unhappiness to Ann. She would merely assume that 
he was unwell and probably dose him with physic from 
the herbalist’s round the corner. Again, he saw that 
209 


YOUNG EARNEST 


George, like Ann, had a gusto in his way of living 
which he himself lacked, and now only enjoyed vi- 
cariously. That could no longer fret his nerves as in 
the old days it had done; he was fortified by the mem- 
ory of his act of revolt and the months of entire 
independence he had enjoyed since his coming to Lon- 
don. He looked up at Ann from his letter. 

“Bad news?” she said. 

“I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. My father 
has cleared out again.” 

“It’s made you sorry. You always look like that 
when you think of your home. Sometimes I fancy 
you really wish you had never come away.” 

“That’s not true. I’m perfectly content. I’m learn- 
ing not to blame anybody. That isn’t easy.” 

“If you’re not sorry, I don’t see why you want to 
think about it.” 

“You can’t forget people so completely as all that.” 

“Your dad seems to be able to.” 

“I’m not my father.” 

“No. But sometimes I wish you’d take a leaf out 
of his book. From what you tell me he does seem 
able to enjoy himself.” 

“Don’t I?” 

“Oh, you’re better than you used to be, but you do 
frighten me sometimes.” 

“When?” 

“Oh, when you look at me and don’t see me, and 
when I go on talking and you don’t hear a word I’m 
saying. Sometimes I think it’s only because you had 
that queer time when you first came to London, and 


210 


TOGETHER 


then I think you can’t be any different. The world 
does seem upside down, and it seems to me it might 
be better if we went right away and made a new 
start somewheres.” 

It comforted Rene to find that she, too, had her 
qualms, and that there was some stir behind her con- 
stant and equable good humor. He said : 

“Oh, no. I think we shall be all right. Only we 
mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that love makes 
life easier.” 

“Not much fear of that,” she replied, with an odd 
little wry smile. “Mr. Martin said to me, he said, 
This here education makes a man queer to live with. 
If it isn’t idees,’ he said, ‘it’s niceness; and if it isn’t 
niceness it’s bloody obstinacy,’ he said. . . . And I do 
try, Renny, I do reelly, though of course if I hadn’t 
the work during the day I should feel it more.” 

“What would you feel?” 

“Well, I don’t know. Oh, you know, when you 
look at things a long time, and when you like to sit 
and smoke and look inside yourself.” 

“I didn’t know I did that. I don’t see much if I 
do.” 

“Well, you do. And I asked Mr. Martin about it 
and he said it was education, and he said his brother- 
in-law was like that before he went off his head with 
religion. And often when I look at you and you are 
like that I want to put my arms round you and hold 
you until you stop doing it, and begin to think of me 
a little.” 

“But I do think of you all the time.” 


21 1 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Then she put her arms round him and held him 
close until he forgot all but her in the dark pleasure 
that is called love. 

And again he drifted and supposed himself content, 
until one day when a young man hailed him and told 
him to drive to Islington where there was an exhibi- 
tion of modern engineering. Halfway there, the 
young man stopped the car, leaped out excitedly, 
gripped Rene by the arm, and cried : 

“Good Lord, if it isn’t old Rene!” 

It was Kurt Brock. 

“I say!” he said. “What a find!” 

“The taxi’s mounting up,” said Rene. 

“I say, you take me out to Hendon and we’ll have 
a yarn. They told me you were still at it, and I was 
meaning to come and see you, but I’m up to my eyes 
in work. Let me drive.” 

He took the wheel and sent the car whizzing through 
the traffic at a speed that made Rene cry out in pro- 
test that he’d have him run in and his license for- 
feited. Kurt slowed down a little. 

“Cars crawl so,” he said, “once you’ve tried a 
flier.” 

“I’ve seen your name in the papers.” 

“Yes. I won my first race, Glasgow to Edinburgh 
round the coast of Scotland. Bit stiff, some of 
it, with mist and rain. I say, I am glad to see you. 
You’re looking fit. Better life than mugging away 
with books, what? Though I don’t know that I’d 
care about being out in the streets in all weathers, 
what ?” 

212 


V 


TOGETHER 


“Oh, you get used to that. I hate it when the engine 
goes wrong and I have to stay at home.” 

They reached Hendon and Kurt took his old friend 
to see his new monoplane. 

“Like to go up in her ? She’s a snorter. Takes the 
air like a bird; you can feel her planes stretching to 
the air, and the engine’s like a cat.” 

Before he could think twice about it, Rene found 
himself sitting up behind Kurt with the machine rush- 
ing over the ground and the engine roaring. He could 
not tell at what point they left the earth, but trees, 
sheds, houses seemed to fall away as though the earth 
were tilted up, and then the air rushed in his ears, 
caught at his throat, pressed hard against his body. 
He looked down. They were ascending in circles. 
Roads looked like ribbons, trees like haycocks, trams 
like toys, men and women were little dots mysteri- 
ously and absurdly moving. They hovered for a mo- 
ment as they turned out of the final circle and made 
straight for a low gray cloud. Soon they passed 
through it, and up again. Presently they turned, 
dipped, and Kurt shut off the engine and they came 
gliding down; the earth tilted up alarmingly to meet 
them ; houses, trees, sheds slid back into their places. 
Rene was startled to find the earth almost immedi- 
ately flattened out again without the threatened im- 
pact, and back they darted to the hangar. 

“Glorious?” asked Kurt. 

“I — I don’t know yet,” replied Rene. 

“How like you!” 

“How do you mean — like me?” 

213 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I mean, to admit that you don’t know. Half 
the people I take up pretend they like it, though 
they hate it really. A few, like you, don’t know, 
but they don’t say so. I wish I’d been the first man to 
do it.” 

Rene had to walk to get warm again, and he left 
Kurt in his hangar for a moment to instruct one of 
his mechanics. He came quickly, caught Rene by the 
arm, and laughed, telling him how comic it was to 
see him in his chauffeur’s clothes, disguised, the truant 
brother-in-law hiding behind a uniform. Rene said: 

“I’ve got used to it now.” 

“Do you ever open a book ?” 

“Sometimes. I had a few sent to me.” 

“Economic books?” asked Kurt. 

“No. But I go on thinking about all that. Habit, I 
suppose, or perhaps trying to discover what it really 
is all about, and I don’t know. They used to call it a 
science, but it can’t be scientific ” 

“That’s what I say. You do know where you are 
with an engine. You can eat up distance. But I 
thought clever people would never understand that. 
You used not to. Perhaps you’re not clever any more. 
That’s what I said to Linda. Oh, I’m sorry.” 

“You needn’t be.” Rene gulped that out, for indeed 
he was embarrassed. The days of his torment were 
brought back suddenly, came savagely breaking 
through his simple pleasure in the rediscovery of this 
enlarged Kurt, grown from boy to man without loss 
of youth and frankness. He extricated himself from 
his confusion by asking : 


214 


TOGETHER 


“How is she?” And at once he was shocked to 
find out how little he really cared to know. 

“Linda? Well, she’s a much better sort than she 
used to be. I don’t know much about women, though 
I like them well enough. Linda? Oh, she seems 
happy. She has a house and a piano and a lot of peo- 
ple, goes abroad, little parties of four or five, mixed ; 
musicians and professors, cream of Thrigsby, you 
know. She wrote a play for the Thrigsby Repertory 
Theater, all about you and marriage and sex. Rather 
disgusting, I thought it, but all Thrigsby flocked to see 
it. All the same, yes, she is nicer. Not so inquisitive ; 
doesn’t romance so wildly. The only objection I have 
to her now is that she will get me into a corner when 
I’m at home and talk about you. I think she ought to 
ignore your existence, as it is no longer her affair. 
She seems unable to do that, and she fancies I know 
something about you that she doesn’t, though I’ve told 
her over and over again that I don’t pretend to un- 
derstand you or anybody else. I did tell her that you 
made me feel that what I wanted to do wasn’t neces- 
sarily a thing to be ashamed of.” 

“I did that?” 

“Well, it was only after you came that I was able 
to tell the mater that I didn’t want to do as she wished 
and couldn’t. . . . Where are you living ?” 

Rene described Ann’s two rooms. 

“Do you like it ? I mean, aren’t they rather grubby 
and piggy?” 

Rene thought it over with a clear picture in his mind 
of Ann’s room and Jimmy’s and Kilner’s, and the 

215 


YOUNG EARNEST 


women standing at the doors and leaning out of the 
windows, and the children playing in the muck. For 
him it was all colored emotionally. Moments of dis- 
taste he could remember, but nothing like the offended 
fastidiousness expressed in Kurt’s tone. 

“Well, yes. Untidy and careless. One day’s work 
slops over into the next day. But, you know, my home 
was not so very unlike that. I used to hate it at home 
when I got back at night to find my bed unmade. That 
used to happen.” 

“Can -I come and see you? I’m here for a fort- 
night. My business is up north. Got a factory now. 
You must come and see it if ever you are ” 

“I don’t think I’m likely to go north again. I feel 
that’s finished. I don’t know why. It isn’t that I 
have any hatred for it, or any bitterness about what 
happened. Only I feel on firmer ground here, as 
though I had taken root.” 

“I’ll come along then. Any night?” 

“Almost any night.” 

“I’ll take my chance.” 

They shook hands, Kurt with a grip that squeezed 
Rene’s knuckles together until the pain was horrible. 

“ ’Member our smash ?” asked Kurt. 

Rene grinned at the recollection. He was very 
pleased and comfortable. To have established a con- 
nection with the past through Kurt was to have it 
made without shock of shame or injury to vanity. 
Through Kurt’s frank mind it was cleaned and shaped 
for him, presented to him so that he must make the 
necessary effort to strike out of himself the light 
216 


TOGETHER 


which should reveal it, the light of humor. It was a 
very faint gleam that came out of him, but it was 
enough to serve and to imprint the picture on his mind, 
give him possession of it, and deliver him from the 
anguish which attended all his dark contemplations. 

“Oh, yes ,” he said, “and I remember how I lec- 
tured you. And now the positions are* reversed.” 

“I don’t see that.” 

An elegant young man in a gray suit came up, with 
a beautiful woman of a loveliness and charm that took 
Rene’s breath away. 

“How do, Kurt ?” said the young man, stepping in 
front of him. “Lady Clewer wishes to be ” 

Kurt shook hands with the beautiful lady and with 
her and her companion walked away toward the knot 
of brilliant persons gathered round a biplane that had 
just come to earth. 

Flushed and tingling at the hurt, Rene rushed away, 
savagely wound up his engine, and glided back into the 
city, to the narrow place where he had till now lived 
in comfort and the pleasures of simplicity. Small 
and confined he saw it now, mean and untidy. But it 
had been and was still his refuge. He had been happy, 
and the world had ignored his happiness and snatched 
it away from him. He was actively angry and jealous. 

He frightened Ann by the hungry affection with 
which he greeted her when she came home, after work- 
ing overtime to keep pace with a rush of work at her 
factory. She liked it too. It was exciting. Yet she 
could not conceal her fear. She was more than his 
match in exuberance, but here was a demand upon 
217 


YOUNG EARNEST 


her that she could not recognize and very soon she 
was in tears; not her happy tears that had so often 
reconciled him and made him gleeful and proud. He 
was humbled and acutely conscious of separation from 
her, though they clung together. For a few moments 
the whole weight of their relationship was thrown 
upon their loyalty, and it did not yield. She slept 
at last, her hand in his, but he lay awake staring back 
into the past, fascinated as the light growing in him 
showed it up in continually sharpening relief — his 
parting from his father; him he could see very clearly; 
but his mother was in shadow, sitting, head down, 
hands busy, never stirring, in acceptance. And Linda ? 
He could see her at that absurd tea-party when his 
father had shown her his picture. She walked into 
his life then. They sat by the tulips and she was gone. 
He could remember his own desire and after, only its 
horrible, inexplicable disappearance. 


VI 


KILNER 

Could I find a place to be alone with Heaven 
I would speak my heart out. 

rp HE next night Ann went out alone. She in- 
sisted that it must be alone, though she gave 
him her most happy smile to reassure him. 

He sat reading a copy of Extracts from Browning 
which he had bought for twopence from old Lunt. 
The book was against his temper, but he found a cer- 
tain pleasure in making himself read from page to 
page. At nine o’clock Kilner came in. He was gaunt 
and haggard, and his collar was dirty. He nodded, 
produced a pipe, and sank, as he lit it, into the wicker 
chair opposite Rene’s. 

“You’re comfortable in here,” he said. “Snug. I 
suppose once you’re settled in here of a night you 
don’t give a blast what goes on in the world outside. 
One doesn’t when one has got what one wants.” 

Rene laid his book down. 

“Have you got what you want?” 

“I ? No. I never I was going to say I never 

have. I don’t suppose I ever shall. That makes me 
hate all the people who settle down in comfort and 
219 


YOUNG EARNEST 


pretend there is nothing more to want. And as that is 
nearly everybody, you can imagine the hating part of 
me is kept pretty busy. That again is a nuisance, be- 
cause it gets between me and what I want, and makes 
me waste energy in analyzing myself, my enemies, 
patrons (when I have any), friends. My relations 
gave me up as a bad job long ago. They made all sorts 
of sacrifices because they were led to believe that my 
talent would in the end make me more comfortable 
than they had ever been. When they found that I pre- 
ferred discomfort and penury and starvation to what 
seemed to them the simple expedient of painting what 
I was expected to paint (they can’t understand any- 
body wanting to paint anything else), then they shrank 
away from me. They could make no more sacrifices. 
People don’t sacrifice for something they don’t see, and 
their eyes close just when mine begin to open. We 
both console ourselves with hatred. I hate what they 
worship : the capacity for comfort. They hate my in- 
capacity. It is very stupid. I would give almost 
anything to be able to live without hatred. It seems 
barely possible, though you come as near to it as any 
man I ever knew. The pity of it is that you arrive at 
it by doing and wanting nothing.” 

“That’s hardly fair,” replied Rene. “I’m out and 
about all day. Every day I clean and oil the car. 
Often I spend hours on it.” 

“You do nothing that could not be done by a less 
intelligent man than yourself. You may do it more 
conscientiously, but at its best it is not good enough 
for your best.” 


220 


KILNER 


“But surely that applies to every trade and pro- 
fession ?" 

“Does it? I’m certainly not going to generalize. 
What's true of you is probably true of thousands of 
men. I'm not interested in them as I am in you." 

“It is even more true of the work I did before," 
said Rene. “I do feel now that I am doing something. 
There is money earned at the end of every day, really 
earned by being useful. But I don't know that I think 
about it much. It has become a habit, like everything 
else." 

“All right, say it has become a habit. Say that a 
certain amount of your energy is drawn off in habit, 
what of the rest? That's what I’m driving at. What 
of the rest?" 

“I read, amuse myself, and Ann " 

“And you are going on forever, working out of 
habit, reading and amusing yourself, and a woman 
who " 

“I’ll trouble you not to say anything against Ann." 

“I’m not saying anything against her. She has a 
perfect right to be herself, but if being herself inter- 
feres with me, I have a perfect right to fight for what 
I want." 

“What do you want?" 

“Your friendship." 

“You have it," replied Rene, in the tone of one 
squashing an argument. 

“Yes," said Kilner, “comfortably. You try to make 
room for me in your little circle of comfort, and, worse 
still, to use me as a comfort. I can't stand that. She 


221 


YOUNG EARNEST 


knows it. That’s why she keeps you away from me.” 

Rene protested: 

“She doesn’t.” 

“She does. You watch her eyes when she comes in 
and finds me here.” 

Rene looked up at him uneasily. Kilner pounced 
on that: 

“You are uneasy already. I don’t want to make 
trouble between you two. You can make quite enough 
for yourselves, but I mean to dig out of you what I 
need. I mean to try anyhow until I am satisfied that 
what I need is not there.” 

There was a challenge in this, and Rene had the 
surprise of finding himself meeting it. Indeed it 
was bracing to feel the painter’s vigorous mind search- 
ing his own and throwing aside all that he disliked 
or condemned. 

“Ever since,” said Rene, “ever since our first meet- 
ing under the archway, I have felt that there was 
something in you that I desired to understand, some- 
thing that, without my understanding it, has made 
more difference than any other thing in my life.” 

Kilner leaned forward. 

“Now,” he said, “now we know where we are. Most 
men pretend with me that they keep the emotional 
side of their nature for women. They don’t give it 
them, God knows what they do with it. Most men also 
confuse their emotions with their imaginations. I 
think that is why they spend their lives in the uncom- 
fortable search after comfort.” 

“And women?” asked Rene. 


222 


KILNER 


“You and I are not concerned for the present with 
women. It seems to me that you and I are in this 
queer place for much the same reason, because we 
were incapable of letting our lives run along the lines 
laid down for them. I don’t know what you are 
after; perhaps you don’t know yourself, but I want 
to tell you what I am after. I’m not a great reader 
of books. Some of them may have said what I’m 
trying to say. ... As long as I can remember I 
have had the intensest joy through my eyes. I think 
I’ve said that before. It doesn’t matter. I see things. 
At first it was just the crude pleasure of form. One 
thing after another, I let the whole world unroll be- 
fore my eyes until I was drunk with delight in it 
and nearly mad. Then forms began to have a mean- 
ing and to melt into each other. I began to see re- 
lations between different forms. Beauty began to 
sing in color. With form and color the world was so 
rich that the strain upon my sight was an agony. My 
greed brought me to seek consolations which unfor- 
tunately did not console. If I accepted comfort, then 
I lost my delight in form and color and was not com- 
fortable. I found that the way out of that was to 
select and concentrate. I could only select in a certain 
passionate mood. In an ecstasy I felt truly that I 
could recognize the object in the contemplation of 
which I could find the greatest joy, a joy equal to that 
of human love, and having this advantage over it that 
it need not be expressed in physical experience. But, 
once felt, it must be expressed. I do my best in paint, 
but it always seems impossible — except when I am 
223 


YOUNG EARNEST 


actually working. When I look at what I have done, 
then I know that it is impossible. One can give a lit- 
tle singing hint of it and no more. And then again, 
turning from that to life, one is disgusted. Every- 
where such coarseness, such greed, such meanness, such 
conceit. Yet to nurse that disgust is to feel the joy 
fade away, to hear the song of it die down. There 
is no justice then, no kindness, and the world is so 
horrible that the soul takes refuge in a sorry silence. 
Youth is then a heated torment from which there is 
no escape, but in a kind of death that brings decay 
and poisons love. . . . There, if you can understand 
that, you can understand me. I cannot surrender 
my vision either to comfort or to my own disgust.” 

They were silent for some moments. Then Rene 
said: 

“In here,” he touched his breast, “I know that you 
are right. I have been trying all this time to under- 
stand you with my brain, but now that seems only to 
be a sieve through which to pass what you have said. 
You see, I have never tried to express anything, but 
there have been times in my life when I have been 
moved enough to understand faintly what you mean. 
Disgust ? I know that too. Almost everything I have 
ever done seems to me now to have been the result of 
disgust. I suppose that is why I am what I am. But 
I’m glad you came in to-night. I was going through 
another crisis of disgust; I go from one to another.” 

“I know,” said Kilner. “A man does when he seeks 
to find love only in women.” 

Rene winced. His friend laughed at him: 

224 


KILNER 


“Oh, you are not the only one. It begins very early. 
Women exploit their motherhood as they have ex- 
ploited their womanhood to get us. It is not their 
fault. Men have kept their joy from them and pre- 
served their brutishness. There is an even more bitter 
disgust lying in wait for those who seek to find love 
only outside women/’ 

Ann came in on that. She stopped inside the door, 
and glowered at the painter. 

“Oh, so you’ve come back?” 

“Yes,” said Kilner, rising. “Like a bad penny.” 

“Don’t get up. I ain’t no lady. You been talk- 
ing?” 

“Yes,” said Rene. “Shall I make some tea? Had 
a good evening?” 

“No. Rotten.” She had not moved from the door. 
Her eyes came back to Kilner. “You can go on talk- 
ing. I’m off to my bed.” 

And she slipped from the door into the bedroom. 
Rene met his friend’s eyes. They were grimly ironi- 
cal. 


yn 


OLD LUNT 

The glass is full, and now my glass is run : 

And now I live, and now my life is done. 

O LD Lunt was a dirty old man who wore a 
cracked bowler hat rammed down on his head, 
a frock-coat green with age, trousers that hung in 
loops and folds about his lean shanks, and boots held 
together with leather laces and bits of string. He 
had one room at the corner of the mews, and he 
lived God knows how. Ann always said that he 
would stand on the doorstep of a butcher’s shop and 
sniff like a dog, and stay there until they flung him 
a scrap of meat. On a Saturday night he was to be 
seen prowling about the shops, feeling the rabbits and 
fowls, and then shuffling away as though his appe- 
tite had been satisfied through his fingers. He never 
shaved, but clipped his beard close. The skin hung 
so loose on his jaws that shaving would have been 
perilous. His eyes were gray, watery, and red-rimmed, 
and he had ears like red rosettes. 

He used to watch for Rene to come out, and then 
wait by his own door to see if the car left the yard. 
If it did not, then he would come shambling along 
226 


OLD LUNT 


and stand at the gate of the yard. And if Rene were 
working on his car he would edge nearer and nearer 
until he could peer into the engine. Often he would 
stand quite silent, and go away without a word. Oc- 
casionally he would talk and mumble. 

“I remember when there warn’t no railways, and 
my brother Philip drove his horses from Glossop to 
Sheffle. They used to say^ there wouldn’t be no en- 
gines. But there was engines. Then they said there 
wouldn’t be no engines on the road. But there is 
engines on the road. And things grow worse and 
worse for poetry.” 

With variations, that was his customary address. 

About once a month he would sidle up to Rene and 
beg for the loan of one shilling, and ten days or a 
fortnight later he would return a penny or two- 
pence. 

“Interest, interest. Times bad. I must ask you to 
extend the loan.” 

Sometimes he would give the coppers wrapped up in 
old ballads telling of murders and hangings, ship- 
wrecks, battles, national events, some in print, some 
in writing, all dirty. In this way Rene became pos- 
sessed of an ode to the Albert Memorial: 

Proud monument, thou Christmas cake in stone ! 
The thing thou meanest never yet has grown 
In English soil, a virtue not content 
To be its own reward, a virtue bent 
On cheating life of man and man of life. 

We English have rejoiced in the strife 
Of being, till that virtue chilled our blood 

227 


YOUNG EARNEST 


And had us hypnotized and nipped in bud 
Our aspiration. We of Shakespeare’s line 
Had in our living made our life divine 
Till, as we grew accustomed to look at you, 

We worshiped man transformed into a statue. 

This poem was written on the inside of a grocer's 
bag, and when it was handed to Rene it contained 
threepence. It was signed Jethro Lunt, and dated 
April 4, 1887. 

One day Old Lunt extended his usual observations, 
and ended by asking morosely : 

“Did you — did you read my poems?" 

“Why, yes," answered Rene, “all of them." 

“Have you really now ? No one has read my poems 
for thirty years. It’s only the old ballads I sell now, 
and them not often. The newspapers do all the mur- 
ders and hangings. Till the halfpenny newspapers 
came in, I could sell a murder or two in certain streets. 
I had one about Charley Peace: 

Charles Peace, he played the violin. 

Music excited him to sin 

Like drink with other men. 

Maybe you never heard that?" 

“No. I never heard that." 

“No. I thought you wouldn’t have. You’d hardly 
be born then. Hard it is to remember that there are 
some so young they might almost have been born into 
another world." 

He fumbled about in the tails of his coat, humming 
228 


OLD LUNT 


and crooning to himself, and presently he produced a 
litter of papers and held them out diffidently, and so 
shyly that he turned his head away as Rene put out 
his hand for them. 

“There’s forty years’ work there,” he. said. “Forty 
years. I was thirty-five when I began it, thirty-five, 
and hopeful, and I finished it five years ago. I wanted 
to know if you think there’s any chance of its being 
published in a book. I’d like to leave a book behind 
me. I’ve been forgotten. I’d like someone to be re- 
minded of me. I’ve been mortally afraid of the young 
ones till you. There’s something lucky about your 
face, something that shines in it. There was many 
faces like yours in my young days, but there was no 
golden statue in the Gardens then, and this must have 
been meadows down to the river side.” 

He pressed his lips together and mumbled. Rene 
asked him if he could do with a shilling, but he re- 
fused, seemed so hurt that he shriveled and went away. 

Rene kept the manuscript and read it during his 
off hours on the stands. It began nobly on foolscap, 
in a bold, spiky hand, and ended pitifully on old 
envelopes and leaves torn out of penny account books 
or yellowing sheets from ancient volumes. Thirty 
lines were written on the back of the title page of a 
copy of The City of Dreadful Night . It was some 
time before he could find his way through the manu- 
script. The sheets were not numbered, and they were 
in no sort of order. Slowly he pieced the poem to- 
gether, and perceived that it was an epic in ten cantos, 
blank verse varied with odes. It was called Lucifer 
229 


YOUNG EARNEST 


on Earth , or the Rise and Fall of British Industry , 
and it was many days before its first reader could 
make anything out of its confusion. The Gods 
change: it is difficult to make anything in this cen- 
tury of the God of i860. Clearly Jethro Lunt hated 
that God. In fierce rhetoric he denounced His claim 
to omnipotence, but where exactly his .grievance lay, it 
was impossible to discover. Lucifer in the poem strug- 
gled out of Hell, and, catching the Almighty in a mo- 
ment of boredom, unseated Him and sent Him down 
to the Infernal Regions for a space to see how He 
would do there, and afterward, in his spleen, com- 
manded Him to dwell on earth. So God arrived one 
day in a village in Derbyshire, and, acting upon the 
commercial principles always employed in his dealings 
with man, got the inhabitants to apply the mental 
processes till then only used in the practice of religion, 
to their everyday life. Then the community became 
possessed of a horrid energy, set love of gain above 
love of life, and soon the old, quiet society of squire, 
farmer, and laborer was broken up, mills were built 
in the village, their great stacks belched forth smoke 
over the hills so that the heather was dirty to lie 
upon ; the women left their homes to work in the mills, 
and children were taken to help them. And wherever 
God went, the same thing happened. 

Meanwhile Lucifer was enraged to find that he was 
not worshiped as he had hoped. The churches also 
had gone into business. In Hell he had taken some 
pleasure in the sins of the flesh, but these had now 
become so mean, so grubby, and so stealthy that his 
230 


OLD LUNT 


proud spirit was revolted by them, and he said that if 
men liked to fritter away their substance in such 
trumpery they might do so for all he cared, and to 
occupy himself, he began to investigate the divine 
power which sustained Heaven and Earth. Then he 
perceived that God had usurped this power and abused 
it. He set himself to master it, and when he had done 
so, waited until men’s love of gain had brought them 
to an intolerable strain so that they must release the 
spirit in themselves or perish. Then he went down 
upon the earth and engaged God in mortal combat so 
that they both perished, and man was left alone to 
work out his own salvation, for to such desperate issue 
had God brought them in His mischief. Upon the 
earth there were singers born of sorrowful women left 
in anguish by the evils of war and peace, not know- 
ing which was the worse. Slowly their songs came 
to the ears of men, and then in fierce conflict they 
wrought upon God’s perdition until they had made it 
shine in the likeness of beauty. 

That, so far as Rene could make out, was the out- 
line of Old Lunt’s poem. Interspersed were odes in 
condemnation of Queen Victoria, the Duke of 
Wellington, Lord Tennyson, Gladstone, Sir Edward 
Burne-Jones, Augustus Harris, Bulwer Lytton, and 
Thackeray; in praise of Beaconsfield, George Mere- 
dith, Charles Darwin, Cobden, Bradlaugh, General 
Booth, and Charles Stewart Parnell. 

No critic of verse, Rene was unable to judge of the 
work’s poetic merit, though he had a shrewd idea that 
it was small. Historically, it was very valuable to him. 

231 


YOUNG EARNEST 


The picture was horrible, of an England dotted with 
communities screwed up in their own vileness, of an 
energy turned in upon itself, desperately striving to 
satisfy a demand itself had created. The tension must 
have been terrific, and the most pitiful part of the poem 
was its revelation of the author’s gradual yielding to it, 
the slow ruin of his hopes, the growing repulsion from 
a world in which he refused to live except upon his 
own terms. It was possible to mark the exact mo- 
ment of his plunge into despair, for two-thirds of the 
way through he suddenly dropped from verse (grow- 
ing more and more halting) into prose: 

“Art is a world of beauty where there is a logic not 
of this world, but until I have seen beauty here how 
can I hope to reach it? I must have wings, and if my 
soul can find neither love nor friendship, how can it 
ever be fledged for flight? Hatred? That would be 
something. I cannot hate mediocrity. I can only let 
it wither me.” 

And he let himself be withered, though in that 
agony there were moments when the words poured 
melodiously from his brain. 

The last sheet was terrible. It contained only a brief 
description of his room, the grubby ceiling, the sacks 
on which he lay, the peeling paper on the walls, the 
cracked window stuffed with rags. 

“I lick my lips,” he wrote in a savage scrawl. “Bit- 
ter !” Then he had made a blot thus : 



and against it he had written: “My world.” 

232 


OLD LUNT 


Twice after Rene had read the manuscript did Old 
Lunt appear in the yard, but he crept away as soon 
as there seemed any danger of his being accosted. 
And then he did not come again. 

A busy time followed, and he was forgotten except 
that, to please him, Rene had ordered a typewritten 
copy of the poem to be made — that being the nearest 
possible approach to the book of his desire. This copy 
came home at last. Ann was asked to bind it, and did 
so neatly with the green cloth she had for flower stalks. 
Then, a night or two later, it was taken to 'Kilner, for 
him to decorate the cover. He had been told of it, 
tried to read it, but could not. However, he designed a 
decoration for the cover and printed the title and the 
author’s name in bold letters, and beneath each he 
placed a blot. That part of the manuscript appealed 
to him more than all the rest. 

“That,” he said, “is what the world is to all your 
comfortable people, behind the charm and excitement 
with which they cover and disguise it. The only differ- 
ence between them and your old man is that he fought 
to get some light on it and lost. I would rather be he 
than they. He does take his world with him; theirs 
they leave behind, caught in the meshes of their facti- 
tious morals and conventions.” 

“But,” said Rene, “isn’t he leaving his world all 
written out?” 

“No, the tale of how he sank beneath its weight. It 
is true enough, anyhow, to have stirred you into a de- 
sire to give him pleasure. He has roused you exactly 
as I have been trying to do these last months.” 

233 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“That’s true. I do keep trying to get light on that 
little black world, but I say to myself that after all the 
sun’s light is quite enough.” 

“It’s enough for beasts and trees. It isn’t enough 
for men unless they will consent to live like beasts, at 
the mercy of their instincts, in competition with the 
beasts, and have a very nasty time of it. No. No. 
The light your friend was after is the light of the 
imagination. Let your light so shine. He had never 
had it, never more than the will to have it. Proba- 
bly he drank or took to some other form of vice to 
console himself in his more difficult moments. You’ll 
never know. Probably we all know that is worth 
knowing. Young men often make blots like that be- 
cause life is such an infernal long time in beginning; 
but for an old man — well, it looks like a sober con- 
clusion, as though he really had faced a fact, and had 
the sense of humor to go on living in spite of it. 
There!” 

He had finished the cover. 

“I hope he’ll like it.” 

Rene took it that same evening to Old Lunt’s room. 
It was behind a stable and harness room used by a 
grocer as a store. Its one window looked out on a 
blank wall of yellow brick. For the rest the room was 
exactly as the old man had described it ; not a stick of 
furniture in it; sacks thrown in a corner, and on 
these Old Lunt was lying with his legs crossed, his 
hand under his head, smiling up into the dim light. 
The setting sun struck the yellow wall outside the 
234 


OLD LUNT 


window, and the upper part of the room was filled 
with an apricot-colored glow. Dust danced in the 
light. The room was filled with an acrid sweetish 
smell. 

Manuscript in hand, Rene stepped forward. 

“Good evening, sir ,” he said, “I thought you ” 

He stopped, for he knew that the old man was dead. 
He had known it before he began to speak, but the 
sound of his voice brought home to him the mockery 
of words. Raising the cold right hand, he laid The 
Rise and Fall of British Industry beneath it. 

The light died down. The glow sank into the gloom. 
He crept away, told the woman next door that Lunt 
was dead, and she said she would go at once to the 
crowner’s office. 


VIII 


RITA AND JOE 

And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied 
All that was left of a woman once, 

Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. 

A NN had always known Old Lunt. As far back 
as she could remember the mews had been her 
playground, and the old man coming and going had 
been a part of the scene. 

She seemed to connect the silence that visited her 
mate after his death with him, for she filled it with 
reminiscence and stories about him. He used to sing 
queer old songs, and sometimes he could be persuaded 
to tell about the country where he came from and 
flowers and birds; yarns about his father’s farm and 
the happiness he had had on it until it came into his 
brother’s hands, and his brother had gone into the 
manufacturing. Then there was no home for him in 
the old stone house. 

For all her talk Ann could not break in upon Rene’s 
silence, and his eyes would implore her to cease, yet 
she could not cease. She went on and on talking, for 
she dreaded his silence as she dreaded his solemnity. 
They made life heavy and evil for her. If a man was 
236 


RITA AND JOE 


unhappy, there were plenty of distractions and conso- 
lations. Everybody was unhappy at times, but no one 
in his senses clung to his unhappiness the way Renny 
did. It was an exasperation to her to have him like 
this — “mooning and dithering to himself” — because 
he had been so much more complacent and docile than 
she had expected. She had looked for trouble, but 
he had slipped into her ways, and shared her pleasures 
with an astonishing ease and grace, so much so that 
she had had the mortification of hearing two women 
in the mews arguing about him : 

“Garn! ’E ain’t no scholard.” 

“ ’Struth. ’E’s a college gent.” 

“ ’Im ! They might come to see a working girl, but 
they wouldn’t take up with ’er.” 

The trouble she had looked for should have been 
between herself and him, and she was prepared to 
tackle it so soon as it showed its head, but this trouble 
he kept to himself, outside her. And though she called 
it unhappiness, she knew well enough that he was not 
unhappy. 

Indeed, it was a joy to him to find himself more 
and more alive to the world, the little, grubby, amus- 
ing corner of it in Mitcham Mews, and the great 
roaring whirlpool outside in which lay his work. His 
pleasure in London was no longer purely emotional ; no 
longer did he, as it were, implore London to let him 
be a part of it. He was working in it, contributing 
to its life, to its bustle and noise ; but since his talks 
with Kilner and his reading of the poetical works of 
the old ragamuffin, he had been able little by little to 
237 


YOUNG EARNEST 

detach himself from it and watch all that was going 
on. Truly there was never a more amusing city! 
Everything was on show. Everybody had the air of 
expecting to be looked at and admired ; though every- 
body pretended also that he or she had no such ex- 
pectation. When provincials arrived in London they 
seemed to feel all this and to wince before it, but soon 
they perked up their heads and behaved as though 
all eyes were upon them. And they went to the show- 
places, those of which there had been talk in their 
homes from their earliest recollection. But everything 
else also was a show to them. More and more the 
shops tended to become shows. Government offices 
were being pulled down and rebuilt to make more 
show. Exalted personages were bent on making a 
show of their common humanity. Even in the city, 
the offices in which Londoners worked — the counting- 
house behind the shop — were being razed to the ground 
to give place to colossal palaces of ferro-concrete and 
marble and plate-glass. Motor-cars were growing 
more and more garish and glossy; the advertisements 
on the hoardings were more and more crudely col- 
ored. For whom was the show? For whom was 
all the outpouring and display of wealth? Hardly, 
thought Rene, for Mitcham Mews, that sink of the 
submerged and those who could only just hold their 
heads above water. He thought he could find the 
answer in the miles and miles of little houses like the 
house in Hog Lane, six rooms, attics, and cellars, con- 
stantly stretching out to the west and to the east ; the 
unceasing expansion of mediocrity, a flooring of con- 
238 


RITA AND JOE 


Crete, warranted fireproof, to keep the fantastic cre- 
ations of wealth uncontaminated by the sources from 
which wealth sprang. 

These were no general speculations. As he de- 
tached himself from the spectacle of London, and 
observed and brought humor and charity to bear on 
his observations, it became more and more clear to 
him that in this fantastic atmosphere he could not 
live. He was conscious of energy within himself. 
Upward from Mitcham Mews led to the mediocrity 
of the little houses, to those who lived in the daz- 
zlement of the shows, forgetting life, forgetting death. 
Downward? There was no downward without sink- 
ing into the disgusting vices which repelled him. Be- 
yond the mediocrity was only the show where 
everything was sterilized, thought castrated, art her- 
maphrodite. (Kilner knew too much of that.) At 
the same time, he felt that his present mode of life 
could not go on much longer. There would certainly 
be a move from Mitcham Mews, but he wanted it 
also to be a decision, not a mere change of houses. 

Ann returned to her idea of trying a new country, 
and for a time he played with the idea. It had its 
seductions. The long voyage: the indolent life on 
board ship; the possibility as they slipped away from 
existence in England of shedding those elements in 
themselves which prevented the full sympathy desired 
by their affection; the settling in a country where 
class differences were not so acute. But, he felt rather 
than saw, that would mean isolation with Ann, and his 
feeling was against it. When she tried to discuss it 
239 


YOUNG EARNEST 


with him, to get him to consider the respective merits 
of Canada or Australia, he was evasive in his replies 
and soon forced her to drop it. She would show a 
little disappointment, but would reassure herself by- 
saying : 

“There’s no place like old England,” or: “Sally 
Wade’s in Canada, and she does miss dear old Lon- 
don.” 

He was so absorbed in his thoughts and his growing 
certainty that he did not notice how few of his even- 
ings he spent with her. Because she was cheerful, he 
imagined that she must be finding her own amuse- 
ment and satisfaction. He saw a great deal of Kilner, 
and when the painter was otherwise engaged, liked 
to be out in the streets on duty. Without knowing 
why, he had begun to desire to save money. Every 
shilling put by added to his sense of independence 
and potential freedom. He had commenced with a 
money-box, but finding Ann one day shaking coins 
out of it, he opened an account with the Post Office 
Savings Bank. He said nothing to her at the mo- 
ment and was angry with himself for letting it pass, 
but it was impossible to reopen the subject later. He 
told himself that Mitcham Mews was no harbor of 
strict morals, that its inhabitants did more or less what 
they wanted to do, and therefore made it enjoyable 
for him to live among them. (That was the reason 
Kilner had given him for living among the very poor. 
They had the same liberty as the very rich, with none 
of their pretensions or false responsibilities.) He had 
240 


RITA AND JOE 


dismissed the matter from his mind when it was 
brought home to him one night on his returning late 
from work. 

Rita and her husband lived opposite Martin’s yard. 
As he came out of it, Rene was confronted by Ann 
leaving their house with a basin under her arm. 

“I’ve been seeing Rita,” she said. “Joe’s been out 
of work since the coal strike, and he’s going on the 
drink. Her time’s coming, and someone’s got to do for 
her. It was for her I took the money.” 

“I — I beg your pardon, Ann. Why didn’t you say 
so before?” 

“It was the way you looked, Renny, dear. You 
do frighten me so.” 

“I’m sorry. Can I do anything to help?” 

“It may be to-morrow. Anyway, soon. Would you 
mind keeping Joe away? He’s not your sort, I know, 
but he must be kept away.” 

“All right. He shall be kept away. Is she in for 
a bad time?” 

“I’m afraid she is. Work’s been so skeery of Joe 
these times that it’s been all she’s been able to do to 
feed the children.” 

“That’s bad. But she ought to have thought of 
herself.” 

“Sometimes,” said Ann, “there isn’t room for every- 
body to be thought of. If you can get through 
a day or two it’s as much as you can manage without 
thinking what’s going to happen in a month’s 
time.” 

“Don’t you ever look ahead, Ann?” 

241 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“No. What’s the good? Whenever I do, it only 
frightens me.” 

“Are you frightened of anything now?” 

“A little.” 

They had reached their room and she had begun 
to wriggle out of her clothes. 

“I don’t like your being frightened, my dear. 
There’s nothing can hurt us, and being hurt is no great 
thing.” 

“All in the day’s work, eh ? Oh, well. Some things. 
But, don’t you see, I think I’m going to be like Rita.” 

“Ann!” 

She looked at him queerly, almost maliciously. 

“What did y’expect? Making me so fond of you?” 

He said lamely: 

“I — I hadn’t thought of it.” 

She was stung into silence. Presently she crept into 
bed and lay with her face to the wall. In a tone of 
almost petulant disappointment she said at length : 

“I fancied that was why you were putting by all 
that money. I was pleased about that, I was.” 

Rene sat on gloomily in the outer room, listening, 
waiting for her to go to sleep. He was full of resent- 
ment against he knew not what. Her almost cynical 
practicality? Her acceptance without wonder of the 
new fact? As with the rest of his life, so now he was 
able to detach himself from her. She had been pleased 
with him because he had begun to make provision, as 
she thought, against the probable event. She had an- 
nounced the event as one regretting the pleasantness 
of the past, almost as one diffidently presenting a bill 
242 


RITA AND JOE 


— commercialization. Horribly their relationship was 
stripped of their individualities; they were just a man 
and a woman separated by that which they had to- 
gether created. They had known kindness and fel- 
lowship, mutual forbearance and gratitude, and now 
they were despoiled of these good things. He was 
left impotent while she bowed to the disagreeable 
fact and was absorbed in it. And he began to see 
that they had long been borne toward this separation, 
and to escape from the pain of it he had turned to 
Kilner and the things of the mind, while she had com- 
forted herself with the things of the flesh, the suf- 
ferings of the child-ridden Rita, who now seemed to 
him typical of the life of the mews, a creature crushed 
by circumstance, by responsibilities which she could 
not face, a house which she could not clean, children 
whom she could neither feed nor clothe, a husband 
whom she was unable to keep from deterioration. And 
to think that for one moment he had seen beauty in 
her, when she had appeared almost as a symbol of 
maternity, which must be — must it not? — always and 
invariably beautiful and to be worshiped. His idealism 
came crumbling down as he could not away with the 
knowledge that Ann had lost in beauty for him. 

It was no revulsion, no withering of his feeling for 
her; rather it was that the brutal fact had a burn- 
ing quality to peel away the trimmings from what he 
felt. 

He found himself groping back in his life before 
Ann came into it. Nothing quite the same had hap- 
pened to him before. The perishing of his young 
243 


YOUNG EARNEST 


desire had left him in a whirling excitement which 
contained less torture than this obsession of cold re- 
alization. Bereft now of all that had made his life 
good and pleasant and amusing, he could only appre- 
ciate Ann and the experience that lay before her, ap- 
preciate, but not understand. That was too horrible. 
She had been so dear to him ; such a good, kind, true, 
brave little soul. The resentment that he could not 
altogether escape he visited on Rita, as Ann had from 
the first visited hers on Kilner. 

Why should Kilner on the one hand, and Rita on 
the other, draw them apart? Why had they created 
nothing that could be shared outside themselves ? Why 
should that which they had created destroy that which 
they had valued in their life together? Why — and he 
came firmly back to his real obsession — why should 
they have so isolated themselves that the natural 
consequence of their love, if love it were, should 
be an intrusion, a shock greater than they could 
bear? 

He listened again. Ann’s breathing seemed to tell 
that she was asleep. He crept in to her. She was 
awake. After what seemed an age, she said in a dry, 
weary voice : 

“I keep trying to think what kind of a house you 
lived in.” 

He described Hog Lane West. 

“No. The other one, I mean.” 

“Oh, that?” He told her it was like a little house 
in some Gardens not far away. 

Then in the same dry, weary voice she said : 

244 


RITA AND JOE 

“I have been trying to think what she felt when you 
left her.” 

“For God’s sake,” cried he, “for God’s sake keep 
that out of it.” 

“I do try to, Renny, dear. But I can’t help think- 
ing about her sometimes when you’re like that ” 

“Don’t talk about it, Ann, don’t talk about it. Go 
to sleep.” 

“Kiss me, then. I couldn’t go to sleep till you’d 
kissed me. Not to-night. It is all right, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, yes. It’s all right, bless you.” 

“I don’t want to be a drag on you, Renny, dear. It 
is a blessing we’re not married, isn’t it?” 

“That doesn’t matter.” 

“That’s what I say. If it’s right it can’t stop, can 
it? If it’s wrong, it must.” 

He kissed her to stop her talking. She sighed con- 
tentedly, slid her arm into his and pressed her face 
against his shoulder. 

“Good night. We have been happy.” 

And in two minutes she was asleep. He too was 
glad of the happiness they had. He was a little in- 
fected with her fatalism. If there were to be calami- 
ties, there had been stores of frank pleasure and true 
delight to draw upon in defense against them. 

By killing off an imaginary grandmother, Ann pro- 
cured a half-day off from her work and spent the 
afternoon with Rita, who was weak and dispirited by 
the great heat which filled the mews with stale air 
and brought old fumes and stenches from the stables.- 
245 


YOUNG EARNEST 


There had been thunder and storms, and the two 
youngest children were down with colic. Joe had 
disappeared with Click and Billy, who, to Rita’s great 
distress, had begun to seek her husband’s company 
and to give him money — at least she supposed they 
did, for he had nowhere else to get it. All day long 
Rita talked about a bed her mother had bought for 
the best bedroom just before she married again, a 
beautiful bed with four big brass knobs and sixteen 
little brass knobs, and a bit of brass making a pattern 
at the head. And it had a real eiderdown, and the 
springs were not like ordinary springs, but spirals. 
When she had exhausted the wonder of the bed she 
began an endless story of the aspidistra and Mr. 
’Awkins who undertook to water it and forgot for 
a whole week, when the leaves one by one went yel- 
low and brown. Into this story was woven all the 
romance that had ever crept into Rita’s life, and as 
a good deal had crept in through the unlikeliest cor- 
ners, it was a long story. She kept it going, as it 
were, by killing off the leaves of the aspidistra to mark 
the chapters. Mr. ’Awkins was a wonderful man, but 
he never quite said it, and Joe wouldn’t take no for 
an answer, and Joe really did seem to be fond of her, 
“and mother could be awful.” Besides Joe did prom- 
ise to make a home for her, and they did go and look 
at furniture on Saturdays, but always after they had 
looked at furniture they used to go to music-halls, 
so they never had the money to buy it. And then 
they got married. 

For hours Ann sat listening to the woman’s voice 
246 


RITA AND JOE 


droning on. The elder children had been taken charge 
of by neighbors. The others needed constant atten- 
tion. Joe came home in the evening, merrily drunk. 
Ann met him at the door and told him he could not 
come in. He swore at her and vowed he would. She 
struggled with him. He was fuddled and uncertain on 
his legs, and she very quickly had him slithering down 
the stairs. He sat at the bottom and roared: 

“Jezebubble ! That’s what you are! Jezebubble! 
Throwing people down!” 

Ann had gone to the window, and seeing Rene in 
the yard opposite, she called to him and told him to 
take. Joe away and make him sober. Rene came run- 
ning up, dragged Joe to his feet, lugged him into 
the yard, and held his head under the tap. Joe splut- 
tered and cursed, and when he was released, stood up 
with the water streaming from his hair, eyes, and 
mouth. He showed fight. Rene caught him by the 
neck and threatened to turn on the tap again unless 
he showed himself amenable to reason. 

Ann called: 

“Take him away.” 

Rene nodded, picked Joe up in his arms, and threw 
him on the floor of his car and drove him out far be- 
yond Uxbridge into the country. There by a black 
pinewood they stopped. Rene got down and laughed, 
for Joe had picked himself up and was sitting perkily 
with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, 
with his hat on one side, pretending to be a lord. 

“Aw! Chauffah!” he said. “Dwive me to Picca- 
dilly Circus. I want to buy a box of matches.” Chang- 
247 


YOUNG EARNEST 


in g his tone, he added: “You don’t ’appen to ’ave a 
fag on yer, guvnor?” 

Rene gave him a cigarette and a match, lit one 
himself, and sat by the side of the road. 

“Was that a joy ride?” asked Joe. 

“No charge,” replied Rene. 

“I’ve spat in the car. Is there any charge for that ?” 

“I’ll smack your head if you do it again.” 

Joe looked warily and solemnly at him, then de- 
liberately spat on the floor of the car. 

“That,” he said, “is to show I know you’re a gen- 
tleman, and what I thinks of yer.” 

Rene dragged him out of the car, smacked his head, 
and flung him into the bracken. 

“I’ll have the law on yer,” yelled Joe, trying to shout 
himself into a fury. 

“Then you’ll have to walk home. Maybe that would 
sober you.” 

“No ’arm, me lord, no ’arm. It’s looking for work, 
guvnor, that’s what it is. It makes you fuddled. 
’Struth it does. Here am I with five children, doing 
my duty by my country, and I can’t get work. Five 
children. ‘Good!’ says you, being a gentleman and 
well provided for. ‘Who’s to support ’em?’ says I. 
‘You,’ says you. ‘Let me work,’ says I. ‘There ain’t 
no work,’ says you. ‘There’s going to be work for as 
few as possible in this ’ere country,’ you says. ‘Chuck 
your flaming union,’ you says, ‘blackleg the bloody 
unionists,’ you says, ‘and there’ll be heaps of work at 
one farving per hour.’ ‘Five children,’ says I. ‘Good,’ 
says yotL ‘They’ve got hungry little bellies,’ says I. 

248 


RITA AND JOE 

‘Have they ?’ says you. ‘Let ’em come and watch the 
blokes coming to my dinner-party to-night.’ ” He had 
worked himself up to an excitement which he could 
not contain, and he burst into tears. 

“ ’Struth is, sir,” he said presently, “I ain’t getting 
enough to eat, and you know how it is with my 
missus.” 

“Ann Pidduck is looking after her,” said Rene, 
“and I promised to look after you.” 

“Woffor did you take me out into the bloomin’ 
country ?” 

“I hardly know. One doesn’t worry about distance 
in the car. She said: ‘Take him away.’ So I took 
you away. I’m afraid I have rather a literal mind.” 

“Well, it’s pretty here, ain’t it? I took my eldest 
into the country once. When he got back he said to 
his mother, he said: ‘There was parrots in all the 
trees, and as for cows there was more than one.’ 
’E’d never seen any bird but sparrows and a parrot. 
I s’pose he thought anything bigger than a sparrow 
must be a parrot. What they’ll grow up like, Gawd 
knows, and He don’t care. It makes me sick to think 
of another one coming. I’d like to know what the ’Ell 
Gawd’s playing at making a man so that ’e ’as a great 
love o’ women and can’t get enough t’eat. Us work- 
in’-men ought to be eunuchs, so we ought. If 
you got a spark o’ spirit in you it does you down 
every time. You can take me back now, guvnor. I’ll 
be good.” 

He climbed up into the car, resumed his lordly atti- 
tude, lit a cigarette, and said : 

249 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“ ’Ome, and drive like ’Ell. I’ll stand the bally 
fines.” 

The pathos of the man’s grotesque humor spring- 
ing up through his misery moved Rene so much that 
he forgot his own perplexity and desired only to please 
him. He drove back full tilt, guessing that it was 
late for the “controls” to be manned, and they reached 
the yard just as the lamps in the mews were being 
lit. As they came out of the yard they saw a police- 
man standing at the door opposite. Joe put Rene 
between himself and the constable, and they went up 
to Ann’s room. There the electrician peeped out. 

“I say,” he said, “I say. They’ve blabbed.” 

“Blabbed! What do you mean? Who’s blabbed?” 

“It’s Click and Billy I mean. They’d got stuff. I 
don’t know where* they got it. They made me help 
get rid of it. I ’ad to get money somewheres. Click’s 
a Catholic, and he says stealing isn’t stealing if you’re 
starving. They must have been nabbed. I ain’t a 
thief, guvnor. I only helped get rid of the stuff. They 
said I could because I was known respectable. Re- 
spectability ain’t done me no good afore.” 

“Keep quiet,” said Rene. “He’ll hear you. Perhaps 
he isn’t waiting for you.” 

“ ’E ain’t moved. I know how they look when 
they’re on the cop. Devils! Sly devils! I seen ’em 
take Click afore now and old Bessie.” 

“Be quiet, you fool. Sit down and have something 
to eat.” 

He placed three cold sausages in front of Joe. They 
vanished. He produced a piece of ham. That was 
250 


RITA AND JOE 


soon gnawed to the bone. Half a loaf of bread and a 
small tin of bloater paste soon followed, and Joe began 
to caress his stomach affectionately. 

“Look here,” said Rene. “What will it mean if 
they get you?” 

“First offender. I’d get off, all right. But the 
crooks ’ll never let me alone, and the police ’ll have me 
marked down as a man to nab if ever they want a 
’spected person.” 

“All right. You sit here. I’ll go and see how things 
are over there.” 

The policeman eyed Rene as he went in. 

“Want anything?” 

“No, sir. No.” 

“There’s nothing going on here, nothing unusual. 
Confinement.” 

Ann heard his voice and came down to him. They 
walked up the mews. Rita was in a delirium. She 
kept reproaching Joe over and over again for not buy- 
ing a fire-screen he had promised her. And then 
she seemed to be living over again in some scene 
of jealousy. Joe must not come near her. It 
might not be safe. Rene told her his news. Ann 
said : 

“She guessed that. It’s that’s broken her up so. 
She thinks she isn’t a respectable woman any longer. I 
don’t know that it wouldn’t be best to let him be 
taken.” 

“But doesn’t that mean that he’s done for? You 
know better than I.” 

“You don’t get much of a chance.” 

251 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Then we’ll do what we can. Tell the policeman he 
isn’t sleeping here to-night.” 

“All right. All right. I don’t think I’ll be back 
till the morning, and then I’ll have to go to work. So 
good night, Renny, dear. It is good of you.” 

They parted. He heard her tell the policeman how 
things were in the house, and that Joe would not be 
sleeping there that night, but at his mother’s off the 
Fulham Road. The policeman asked for the address, 
and she gave it him pat, and after a moment or two 
he rolled away. Rene gave him three minutes, then 
returned to Joe and told him what had happened, 
gave him a shilling for a doss, and asked him to meet 
him in the morning at the cab-rank in Lancaster Gate. 

“If I pay your passage to Canada, will you go? 
You can get a start out there and have your family 
out after you. We’ll look after them.” 

“Will I go?” cried Joe. “I’ve had enough of this 
’ere blasted country. Will I go? D’you know that’s 
been in my mind ever since that there jpy ride. I says 
to myself, I says, moving’s that easy. You been stuck 
still, Joe, my buck, that’s what’s been the matter with 
you.” 

Rene kept cave while the poor devil slunk out of the 
mews, and then followed him, saw him mount a bus 
and be borne away eastward, standing up and waving 
his hand as long as he was in sight. 

His passing left Rene stranded. He had been caught 
up in the eddy of that little drama, and then flung 
back into his solitude, and, though he was cheered by 
his activity, he was also depressed by the horrid grub- 
252 


RITA AND JOE 


biness of the life that had been revealed to him; 
nothing in the world for Joe but the -procuring of 
food, the bare satisfaction of desire ; an amused fond- 
ness for his children. That horrible capacity for hap- 
piness in degradation. 

He stood below the lighted window of Rita’s room. 
A moaning came out of it. A thin voice almost 
screaming : 

“Oh, don’t, Joe, don’t!” 

There were appalling silences. Then whisperings. 
A long silence that chilled him to the heart. At length 
the cry of the new-born child, a cry of pain. Then 
again silence, broken only by the sound of water and 
the clink of metal against crockery. 

In that moment Rene became almost unbearably 
alive to the suffering of the woman, and to all suffer- 
ing, and to his own. 


IX 


TALK 

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, 
let him declare what he seeth. 

T T takes an unconscionable long time to extort money 
from the Post Office Savings Bank, and Rene bor- 
rowed from his employer to pay Joe’s passage and the 
guarantee demanded by the Canadian immigration au- 
thorities. Joe could not thank him, but only, with 
tears in his eyes, shake him by the hand. 

“You know,” he said, “I could never have gone if 
I’d once been in prison. That’s where they has you. 
If wishing could do it, you’ll have good luck. And if 
praying’s any good I don’t mind trying that, though 
I’m not much of a hand at it and out of practice.” 

He gave Rene a crumpled dirty letter to Rita, and 
bade him tell her that his last thought was for her, 
and that when she came out he would be on the quay 
to meet her. 

“I’ve told ’er in my letter it was you put a heart 
into me, guvnor. I’d been feeding on it that long it 
was nearly all eat away.” 

At last the train moved — (Rene had taken him to 
the station with his few possessions, smuggled out 
254 


TALK 


under the very eyes of the policeman) — Joe leaped into 
his carriage and sang out: 

“So long!” 

“Good luck!” cried Rene, as he moved away through 
the crowd of tearful women and young men on the 
platform. 

As he was leaving the station he met Kurt, just re- 
turned from a flying visit to Thrigsby. He explained 
that he had been called away on business or 
would have been round before to pay his promised 
visit. 

“I told them at home I’d seen you. My mother 
turned on a face like a window-shutter — you know, the 
iron kind they have in Paris, and clank down in the 
small hours of the morning just to make sure no one 
shall sleep the night through. Funny old thing! I 
suppose she regards you as one dead. Silly thing to 
do, when Fd just told her you were very much alive. 
Linda was quite excited and started pumping up all 
sorts of emotions until I asked her how long it was 
since she had even thought of you. Then she stopped 
that game. She knows it isn’t any use with me. I 
once said to her, ‘My dear girl, if you really felt all 
the emotions you pretend to feel, you’d be dead in a 
week.’ I never could stand that sort of thing myself. 
She gets them out of books, you know, and really 
sometimes it is quite impressive, or would be, if it 
weren’t so disgustingly false. It is wonderful to feel 
things, but you can’t feel things all the time and be 
sane. No one can. One’s too busy. It’s beastly to 
make that sort of thing cheap as they do on the stage 


YOUNG EARNEST 


and in Linda’s mucky novels — Oh, she’s written an- 
other play, all about my mother this time. Well, after 
a bit she cooled down and I told her you were quite 
pleased with yourself, earning an humble but honest 
living. She wanted to know if you were alone. I 
said I didn’t know, but anyhow it wasn’t her affair. 
She agreed, and said that anything she might do 
wasn’t your affair either. Then she talked a great 
deal of nonsense about your being the New Man, with 
too much vitality and intellectual energy for the out- 
worn institutions of a demoded society, and a lot more 
rot of that kind. The fact is, of course, that she 
prefers living without you and doesn’t want any 
fuss. The scandal had made her interesting to 
Thrigsby, and she can find all sorts of silly people 
there who want to be instructed in the art of being 
advanced, to think shocking things and to live with- 
out shocks of any kind. Linda’s shock is keeping 
quite a lot of people going. I told her I should see 
you again and she asked me to give you her love, 
and to say that she is quite happy and hopes you will 
go and see her play when it is acted in London by 
the Thrigsby Players. I say, you must have thought 
me a swine that day at Hendon. That was a Lord 
and a Lady. These people haven’t any manners, and 
one gets like them. I’m their particular pet just 
now. You should see me hobnobbing with Cabinet 
Ministers and theater managers. It is terrible how 
alike they are.” 

“You’ll see a bit of difference if you come to Mit- 
cham Mews,” said Rene. 

256 


TALK 


‘Til come to-night.” 

“Good.” 

Rita had come successfully through her ordeal, and 
she was in the dreaming bliss of having her baby by 
her side, with no other thought in her mind than the 
satisfaction of its contact, the blessed charge of its 
helpless little life, not yet, nor for a long time to come, 
separate from her own. Ann took Rene up to see her, 
and he gave her Joe’s letter and told her how pleased 
he had been to go, and how he was looking forward to 
her joining him. To account for his sudden disappear- 
ance they invented a tale of an offer of immediate 
work, conditional upon his sailing at once. The whole 
thing had been so sudden (they said) that there was 
no time for her to be told or for him to wait to see 
her. Did she believe them ? She looked incredulously 
from one to the other, but, holding the letter tightly 
crumpled up in her hand, she decided at length that 
it was a good thing to believe, and sighed out her 
thankfulness. She had relations who would help her 
until Joe sent, and when she was well she would be 
able to work. 

Ann had engaged old Bessie to come in during the 
day, and asked Rene if he would mind her spending 
all her evenings with Rita, and sometimes sleeping with 
her for the first few days. He was only too glad that 
she had found a task which could absorb her energies. 
He told her Kurt was coming, and asked if he might 
bring him over to see her. She had seen Kurt’s pho- 
tograph in the paper and was quite fluttered. 

257 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Oh, him!” she said. “Fancy you knowing him!” 

He did not tell her how Kurt was related to him. 

However, Kurt blurted it out before he had been 
with Ann five minutes. Rene looked sheepish. 

“Come, now, Miss Ann,” laughed Kurt, “you 
didn’t expect him to have no one belonging to 
him or to keep him hidden away from us forever 
and ever. Because you are fond of him you don’t 
expect him to be utterly lost to all his friends, 
do you?” 

“I didn’t know he had a friend like you, Mr. Brock, 
or I shouldn’t have dared to be fond of him — per- 
haps.” 

“Is that a tribute to my personality or to my repu- 
tation.” 

“Well,” said Ann, “you do brighten things up.” 

“One for old Solemn !” said Kurt. “I hoped you’d 
have cured him.” 

“Oh ! I don’t want him to be cured. I don’t want 
him to be different.” 

Rene’s vanity was bristling, but in the face of their 
good humor he could not let it appear. He envied 
Kurt his ease and the skill with which he gauged Ann’s 
humor to strike laughter out of her, so much so that 
he could not mind being the subject of it. Her laugh- 
ter was affectionate. 

They were in Rita’s room, and she lay gazing fas- 
cinated at Kurt’s brown face, with its merry eyes 
flashing blue light as he laughed and talked. The 
children had been told that the great flying man was 
258 


TALK 


coming. They had been staring at him with round 
eyes. At last one of them said : 

“Did you fly here?” 

“Not this time, my lad.” 

“Oncet,” said the piping voice, “oncet we ’ad a bird- 
cage.” 

“With a bird in it?” 

“No. We kep’ a ball in it and marbles.” 

“What happened to it?” 

“Farver popped it. I seen an airyoplane oncet.” 

“Did you? Where?” 

“In ve Park. A little boy 'ad it.” 

“Right ho! We’ll send you an airyoplane like 
that.” 

The children looked at each other, scared at this 
promised good fortune. Then they embraced and 
rocked each other to and fro. 

Rene and Kurt took their leave and passed out into 
the mews. 

“Well?” said Rene. “A bit of difference?” 

“I don’t know about that. But I’m always finding 
that where other folk see only riches or poverty or 
manners or personal tricks and habits, I see only peo- 
ple, and they are much the same everywhere. I nearly 
always like them. I’m not like you. I don’t expect 
anything much.” 

“Do I?” 

“Always. That’s what one loves about you. You 
were the only person who ever expected anything of 
me, and you gave me confidence to expect something 
of myself.” 


259 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Then it’s not a bad thing ?” 

“It’s a splendid thing in a way, only you need to be 
able to love a lot of people to bear up against your 
disappointments. I can’t do that. I find them too 
amusing. I’m too easily pleased with everything they 
do, and, of course, I never stop to think.” 

“But some things make you think.” 

“What things?” 

“Having no money is one of them.” 

“I don’t know that the poor worry much about 
thinking, and lack of money is chronic with them.” 

“Joe tried to think. The trouble was that he didn’t 
know how. It took him as far as the Trade Union, 
and left him there expecting it to do the rest. That’s 
the trouble all round. There has been thinking enough 
to make the union, but not enough to use it. The mere 
fact of union seems to swamp thought, even in the 
leaders. When they speak they are always trying to 
say not what they themselves think, but what they 
fancy the collective body of men wants them to think. 
The result is that events always move just a little 
too fast for them, and they are tied hand and foot 
and left to the mercy of the capitalists who can 
afford to wait longer to see how the cat is going to 
jump.” 

“And the capitalists?” 

“My friend Martin is the only one I know. But I 
imagine they are just the same. They expect their 
money to do their thinking for them. Money and 
crowds have just the same hypnotic effect. Do you 
remember on one of our tours when we were driving at 
260 


TALK 


night with the big headlight showing up the road fifty 
yards in front of us? It was a summer night, and as 
we flashed past trees the birds for a moment took us 
for the sun and began to wake up. It was amusing, 
the swish of the wind we made in the trees, the sudden 
singing of the birds, who sank to sleep again in the 
darkness we left behind us. And then as we drove 
along a woodland road a rabbit darted out into our 
light, and could not get out of it. If we drove slowly 
he ran slowly. If we put on pace to scare him away 
he kept ahead of us. If we stopped he couched down 
with his ears back and his eyes starting out of his 
head, absolutely confined by the walls of darkness 
round our light, and, I suppose, hypnotized by his 
own terror. It seems to me that human thought is 
a light like ours, and that individual men rush into 
it like the rabbit and cannot get out of it. It needs 
only a little plunge into the darkness to be back safe 
and happy in your own life, but they can’t take the 
plunge. We were able to turn the light off the rabbit 
at a cross-road to let him go, but nothing can take 
the light of human thought off men. The analogy is 
rather interesting, because the light of human thought 
is not borne by a horrible engine, but only seems so to 
those who are hypnotized by their own terror, and it 
seems normal to be scurrying away from it and to die 
— morally — of exhaustion. A few men, when they 
come into the light, are brave enough to step out of 
it to discover whence it comes. They find it kindled 
in themselves and, tracing it to its source, they find it 
in the will to live, and they reach the determination 
261 


YOUNG EARNEST 


to carry it farther over the world they live in, in order 
to break down the walls of darkness.” 

“That is rather beyond me,” said Kurt. ‘Tm no 
good at ideas. If you let me keep to people I’m all 
right. Some people do me good; other people make 
me feel cramped and choked. I’m not clever enough 
to know why. And there are lots of nice people with 
whom it is quite enough if one can make them laugh. 
They don’t seem to matter either way.” 

“You see,” said Rene, “human thought doesn’t shine 
until it is energized with feeling and brought into con- 
tact with the divine power that keeps things going. 
That is what the scared people take for a remorseless, 
swift, destroying engine.” 

“I remember now,” said Kurt, “that Linda said you 
were a mystic. That was when you were an economist, 
and I told her it was nonsense, because no mystic 
could read a page of Marshall — wasn’t that your fat 
book?” 

“I don’t know whether it’s mysticism or not, but I 
can’t accept experience without sifting it. I suppose if 
I could do that I should still be in Thrigsby keeping 
up appearances.” 

“And Linda would never have written her plays. 
That would have been a pity.” 

“How absurd you are, Kurt. But you seem able 
to sift experience before it comes to you. You seem to 
be able to do the right thing at the right time.” 

“I never worry about it. Life seems so simple to 
me. Directly it looks like being complicated, I switch 
off and try again. The only thing that worries me is 
262 


TALK 


that it looks horribly as though I should never marry. 
I fall in love all right and somehow that always com- 
plicates things, so then I fall out of love. I can’t love 
a complicated woman, and I haven’t met an uncom- 
plicated one. They all want to feel more than they 
do. Play-acting, I call it.” 

Kilner came in then. He greeted Kurt morosely, 
for his clothes showed that he came from the brilliant 
world, the object of the painter’s particular detesta- 
tion, and Kurt’s manner might easily be taken for 
that affability which puts you at your ease and so dis- 
concertingly leaves you there. 

Rene produced beer and tobacco, made room for 
Kilner by the fireplace, and carried on the discussion : 

“Kurt says women want to feel more than they 
do.” 

“I don’t know about that,” replied Kilner, “but my 
experience is that they generally feel more than the 
occasion demands. They won’t leave anything to the 
future. I don’t think it means anything except that 
they are not particular. They get so precious little 
out of men that they grab what they can and let con- 
sequences take their chance. I don’t blame them either. 
They begin by taking love seriously, so seriously that 
they frighten men and make them run away. I keep 
clear of that, not because I’m frightened, but because 
I can’t find a woman who hasn’t been unbalanced by 
having had some idiot run away from her.” 

“That’s like Kurt,” Rene threw in. “I expect it is 
because you both have a passion for what you are 
doing. It gives you a standard. Now I don’t pretend 
263 


YOUNG EARNEST 


to have a passion for taxi-driving, and I suppose that 
is why I take seriously things that you two are able 
to ignore.” 

“H’m,” growled Kilner, stretching his long legs. 
“Not much in that. We’re both keen on something 
which demands health and nerve and self-confidence, 
a steady hand and a clear head. We can’t afiford to 
throw our minds and passions into the common stock. 
I starve. Your friend has the world at his feet. But 
we’re both outside the world, and have as little truck 
with it as possible.” 

“Both,” said Rene, “outside the hypnotic circle.” 
He had to explain that to Kilner, who was excited by 
the idea. 

“I never thought of that,” he said. “Yes, by Jove, 
it’s true. They are hypnotized, every man Jack of 
them, rich and poor alike. Nothing can shake it off 
except the individual will. Every artist has to go 
through that. And your light, my friend, is nothing 
but the vision of the artist. Only hypnotism, the ab- 
solute surrender of the will, could account for the 
horrible distortions that appear in what they call art, 
what they call morality, the organization of what they 
call society. I know what Fourmy means. The in- 
fernal thing is always cropping up in my work. When 
an artist has seen what he wants to paint, there is al- 
ways the danger of his being hypnotized by it, and 
if he doesn’t shake free of that, he is almost bound 
to paint it badly, however skillful he may be. He may 
paint a picture that people will like, but he won’t create 
a work of art.” 


264 


TALK 

“Isn’t it possible for a man to be hypnotized by art ?” 
asked Rene. 

“If he is, he won’t be an artist. I’ve seen students 
surrender their will one after the other to Raphael, 
Rembrandt, Manet, Cezanne, not to their love of truth 
and beauty, but to the masterful skill which their love 
gave them. If they had surrendered to their love their 
own wills would have been strengthened, not de- 
stroyed. That is always happening : a manner is imi- 
tated, mimicked over and over again until at last it 
is so vilely done, so remote from the original as to 
have no charm to lead even the stupidest little 
draughtsman to make a copy. Is it so in life ? I don’t 
know. Much the same, perhaps. Weren’t there imi- 
tations of Byron for generations after him? Some- 
thing vile the brutes could imitate. No one imitated 
Shelley.” 

“Who was he?” asked Kurt. 

Kilner stared at him aghast. 

“A poet. The poet.” 

“I suppose I ought to have known,” replied Kurt, 
chuckling at Kilner’s annoyance, “but you see I was 
brought up in a German household. There was a fel- 
low called Schiller they used to talk about, and they 
named a club after him where they used to eat and 
drink.” 

“And what,” asked Kilner, “made you take to 
flying?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I always loved engines and 
speed. And after all, you know, it is the only thing 
to do.” 


265 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Kilner thinks painting is the only thing to do,” 
interjected Rene. 

“I meant for me,” answered Kurt. “That may be 
all right for him. I hate using my brains. Things get 
muddled at once if I do. I love using my body so that 
every muscle is called into play, and I loathe illness. 
It’s torture to me to be just a little unwell. I get 
moments out of my work that make everything else 
seem nothing at all, just something to laugh at and 
be merry over.” 

“Something like that is my life,” said Kilner. “A 
few moments, only they are not enough in themselves. 
I have to follow them up in spirit and express them.” 

“And I,” said Rene, “am always hunting about for 
those moments in life and not finding them.” 

“Ever known one?” 

“No, but I’m absolutely certain they are there. I 
never knew what I was after until I met Kilner. I’m 
not certain that I know now. But I’ve escaped social 
hypnotism so far, and from what you tell me I seem to 
be less in danger of hypnotism by my own will than 
either of you.” 

“I deny that,” cried Kilner angrily. “You are de- 
nying the supremacy of the artist. Just because you 
have dodged a few of the conventional social obliga- 
tions, you think ” 

“I’m not denying anything of the kind. I grant you 
the artist is supreme and his vision the most potent 
force in human thought, but the artist also must be 
a man and must live, or there’s an end of his vision. 
He must be prepared if necessary to live in the hyp- 
266 


TALK 


notic circle, and he must be strong enough to assert 
his will in it.” 

‘That’s stupid,” said Kilner. “As if any of us could 
escape, as if that weren’t precisely what the artist does. 
Your friend here is the lucky one. He is doing a new 
thing, exercising a new faculty which is imperfectly 
developed, so that it is not yet prostituted and abused, 
as art, science, and love have been. He is still a won- 
der, even to fools. I who aspire to art, you who 
aspire to love, are to the world nothing but idiots 
who have not the nous to help themselves to the plun- 
der and comfort ready to their hands. But you and 
I are braver than he, for we seek greater things. He 
is content with physical health and adventure. That 
is something. It is a higher aim than money and 
money’s worth. But you and I are definitely pledged 
to accept only the happiness we know to be true, and 
the sorrow to which our wills can consent.” 

“I dunno,” said Kurt, rising, “but I daresay there’s 
a good deal to be said on the other side. I’m not so 
sure, though. I know lots of the other people, and 
they’ve never given me such an amusing evening. I 
haven’t had such a good time since I came to London, 
where everybody thinks of nothing but having a good 
time. I’ll come again. Anyhow, you’re not worrying 
about what other folk are thinking of you, and that’s 
the only thing I can’t stand. Good night.” 

Kilner was too excited to go to bed, and he kept 
Rene up till three o’clock in the morning talking about 
a picture he was painting of God creating Eve out of 
Adam, who was to be shown in an attitude of sur- 
267 


YOUNG EARNEST 


render, though his body gave signs of a fearful agony. 
Yet was it Adam’s will to submit to any torture to 
attain the knowledge of the almighty joy of creation. 

Rene was curious about the woman’s share in the 
operation, and was vaguely distressed to find that in 
Kilner’s intention Eve was to be no more than beau- 
tiful. 

“But is she to have no share in creation and the 
joy of it?” 

Kilner was pacing round the room. He waved his 
fists in the air. 

“Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” he shouted. 
“Don’t you see that we have created her? Even if 
you drop the myth and take to evolution, don’t you 
see that woman has been nothing but the creature, the 
instrument of reproduction? Don’t you see that man 
fell in love with her, and with his love slowly hu- 
manized her, gave her intelligence, humor, charm?” 

“Might it not be,” said Rene, “that woman was 
first, and evolved man to do the work so that she 
might reserve more energy for conception? And again, 
there seems no reason for imagining that either came 
first. The difference in sex is a great deal more super- 
ficial than is generally supposed. It must be. It is 
aggravated by environment and habit, training and 
physical processes, but it is not a fundamental dif- 
ference.” 

Kilner said: 

“You may be right. You sometimes are. But for 
the purpose of my picture Eve must be stupidly beau- 
tiful, just beauty and nothing else. If you like I’ll 
268 


TALK 


paint another Adam and Eve when he has begun to 
love her, and through love has come to 'the desire of 
knowledge. But I’m afraid her eyes will still be stupid, 
and she will still think him rather a fool for desiring 
anything but her.” 


X 


AN ENCOUNTER 

Nous ne dependons point des constitutions ni des chartes, 
mais des instincts et des moeurs. 

T NTELLECTUAL conversation is a very common 
vice among men who have been subjected to what 
is called education. The wages of it is commonly a 
brutal onslaught by the body upon the mind. The 
intellectual is subject to accesses of bestiality unknown 
to the manual laborer, who for that reason regards 
the cultured man with more amusement and contempt 
than respect and envy. 

It was impossible for Rene to surrender to his ex- 
asperated senses. He was too certain of his goal for 
that, though he could not on any side perceive a way 
that should lead him to it. 

Ann was devoting herself entirely to Rita and her 
family. She would emerge now and then to inspect 
him, and to make sure that he was not straying from 
the path of good sense. She scolded him roundly for 
his all-night sitting with Kilner — (she had seen the 
lighted window at two o’clock) — much as the other 
women in the mews rated their men for drinking or 
betting. Having delivered herself, she returned to her 
270 


AN ENCOUNTER 


usual attitude of indulgence and affection, kissed him, 
tidied his hair and went back to her charges. That 
might have satisfied a navvy, but it did not satisfy 
Rene. He was still mentally inflamed with Kilner’s 
talk, and he wanted very much to know if Ann thought 
him a fool for desiring anything but her. He was 
fairly sure she did, but he wanted to be thoroughly, 
painfully sure. The old reaction, you perceive, from 
visionary enthusiasm to disgust. 

His mood made him thoroughly, savagely approve 
of Mitcham Mews. It had character ; not a nice char- 
acter, still an appreciable individual quality. Almost 
all the other habitations he knew of in London were 
uniforms, disguises. Even the delicious little houses 
in Westminster were consciously Georgian or Queen 
Anne, part of an attitude. . . . He was wearying of 
it all. He had caught something of Kurt’s healthi- 
ness and desired to do something that contained ad- 
venture and risk, and the exercise of more than habit- 
ual skill. He hated being at the beck and call of 
any man or woman who signed to him, and sometimes 
he gave himself the pleasure of ignoring them if he 
did not like their looks. Once when he had been sum- 
moned by whistle to a house in Bayswater, and its 
door was opened to emit a large Jew and an expansive 
Gentile lady of pleasure bent on an evening’s snouting 
in the trough of the West End, he put his fingers to 
his nose, and drove off as hard as he could. That 
helped to put him on better terms with his rebellious 
physical existence. He had insulted it. That was 
something. 


271 


YOUNG EARNEST 


But he could not subdue his excitement. He found 
two poor little lovers in the Park one night, and took 
them out into the country free of charge. That 
squared the outrage on the Jew. It was an active 
step toward pure romance. The little lovers had oc- 
cupied less and less space in the car as he brought 
them home under the moon, and his engine sang a 
droning bass to the song they were living. 

And when he reached home he was brought hard up 
against the fact that he was Ann’s acknowledged lover, 
and that she was going to have a child by him. It had, 
he knew, nothing in common with the Jew, but also, 
he could not help feeling, it had lamentably little in 
common with the young lovers. It was a fact like the 
nose on his face, a part of himself, no getting away 
from it; a fact, however, that brought no illumina- 
tion. The nose on his face, he thought, must have 
been once a brilliant discovery. It must have meant 
a revelation of noses that, among other marvels, there 
were such things. 

There was some zest in the fantastic agility of his 
intelligence, and this kept him going. 

One night as he was passing a glaring public-house 
in Chelsea, he thought he saw his father go in by the 
door of the bar parlor. He drew up, stopped his 
engine, and followed. Sure enough it was his father, 
aged a little, grayer, but more sprucely clad. Mr. 
Fourmy was already the center of a little group stand- 
ing by the counter — painters, models, and men who 
looked like actors. He was talking away, exactly as 
272 


AN ENCOUNTER 


he used to do in the Denmark, with the same result 
in laughter and free drinks. Rene ordered a Bass and 
took it to a table at the side, removed his peaked cap, 
and waited for his father to recognize him. This 
Mr. Fourmy did in a few minutes, nodded with perfect 
coolness, and went on with his talk. He kept it up 
for a few moments longer, “touched” one of his 
hearers for half-a-crown, and, that done, let the con- 
versation flag, the group dissolve, and came over to 
his son. 

They shook hands. Rene grinned as he saw his 
father’s amazement at his clothes. 

“Well, I’m jiggered,” said Mr. Fourmy, “I was fair 
flummoxed when I saw your face. I didn’t notice 
your togs. I never thought you would come to this.” 

“I shouldn’t have done any good in your profession, 
father.” 

“So you’ve learned some sauce. That’s new.” 

“I’ve learned a good many things, father, and un- 
learned more.” 

“Have you learned what a rotten hole the world 


1ST 


“No. I like it too much to think ill of it.” 

“Then you haven’t had a really bad time. I hoped 
you’d have a filthy time. You needed it badly, to 
let some of the gas out of you.” 

“It’s been bad enough,” said Rene. “And there’s 
worse ahead. Are you living in London?” 

“I’ve been here some time. It’s a dung-heap. I 
shall go over to Paris. I’d rather die there than any- 
where. There is French blood in us, I believe, and I 


273 


YOUNG EARNEST 


never could stomach the English and their hypocritical^ 
ways. What did they say of Gladstone ? ‘Plays with 
the ace up his sleeve, and pretends God put it there.’ 
That’s the English way. I like blackguards. I’m a 
blackguard myself, but I think God ought to be kept 
out of it. . . . You’re looking fit.” 

“I’m fit enough. George told me you’d left. I’d 
like to know why. I don’t want to open old scores or 
inquire into your private affairs, but it seemed to me 
that my mother was very good to you when you came 
back.” 

“Well It was the same old trouble. Religion. 

Marriage is none too easy, as you seem to have found. 
You can worry through if you play fair and fight 
through the emotional storms that threaten to drown 
you. Now it isn’t fair for a man to draw off his emo- 
tional disturbances in drink or money-making or gam- 
bling or flirtation; and it isn’t fair for a woman to 
draw off hers in religion. Women are devils at that. 
They go off to church and come back as cold as ice, 
with their hands full of little parcels of principles and 
precepts, all forgiveness and humility and submission 
and iron virtue. Some men can live with it. I can’t. 
That’s the whole story.” 

“Thank you,” said Rene. 

“Now, don’t think hardly of your mother. She was 
brought up to think all men horrible, and she never 
got over it. I was wild and idiotically affectionate, 
and couldn’t understand why she held back so. When 
I did understand, the mischief was done ; she was hurt 
and scared, and kept you boys from me. Didn’t want 
274 


AN ENCOUNTER 


you ever to be men — as if she could prevent it ! She 
did try with me when I came back. Perhaps she’d 
seen and felt more than I thought. It wasn’t all church 
nonsense about accepting your husband, however 
loathsome he may be to you. Your going off like that 
set her back again, and back she went to her church. 
She thought it was all my doing, and perhaps it was.” 

“No, no,” said Rene. 

“I think it was. I ought to have seen that I wasn’t 
fit company for anyone I loved. Too far gone, I sup- 
pose, too far gone.” 

“I’d like you to know that I’m glad it happened. 
It has saved me from going through life with my eyes 
shut. I’ve met good people and understood their good- 
ness. And I’ve met miserable failures and seen how 
even they have some sweetness in their lives. And I 
owe it to you, father, that I have seen the wildness of 
life beneath the trumpery policing we call civilization, 
and now I feel that I shall never be blind to it.” 

“That’s all right,” said his father, “if you don’t let 
the wildness break up your own self-control. That’s 
what happened to me. Queer how clever two men can 
be when they understand each other. Can you lend 
me half-a-sovereign, and then I’ll have enough to take 
me over to Paris ?” 

Rene gave his father ten shillings in silver, they 
shook hands, the old man patting the younger’s shoul- 
der, and they quitted the bar parlor together. 

As Rene was starting his engine, a lady came up and 
asked him to take her to an address in Holland Park. 
275 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He did so. The lady looked at him curiously as she 
paid the fare, walked to the gate of the house, turned, 
hesitated, then came back. 

“Excuse me,” she said, “you are so like someone I 
used to know. Aren’t you Mr. Fourmy?” 

He looked at her, seemed to remember her, but could 
not place her, though he thought dimly of Scotland. 

“Yes,” he said, “that’s my name.” 

“Mine,” she said, “was Rachel Bentley. I’m mar- 
ried now. I recognized you at once. I was so inter- 
ested coming along. I hope nothing has ” 

“Oh, no,” said he, smiling, “I never had any money, 
you know. I drifted into this. I like it.” 

“I only thought,” she said vaguely. “I mean — Oh, 
it doesn’t matter. I’m glad it isn’t that. Good-by.” 

She seemed embarrassed by her own generous im- 
pulse, and it was a relief to him when she turned 
away. He waited for a moment to see if it was her 
own house. She opened the door with a key. He 
took note of the number, and, as he passed, of the cab- 
rank at the end of the road. 

It was some time before he knew why he had done 
this, many hours before he was confronted with the 
image of Cathleen Bentley, in the woods of Scotland; 
Cathleen shaking the bracken from her hair, smiling 
up at him in the musing, perplexed happiness of her 
youth. 


XI 


VISION 

iroWds S'oSovs i\6ovra ^povriSo? 7rXavoi? 

f I ^ HERE came a letter from Joe to say that he had 
obtained work with a good firm within a week of 
landing, and would soon be able to save or borrow 
enough to pay for his wife and children to join him. 
Rita, who had sunk into a despondent lethargy, was 
roused to excitement and began to thrill the children 
with tales of the adventure before them. She quickly 
recovered her health and energy, and wrested the con- 
trol of her affairs from Ann, who did not like it. 
Feeling ran high, and things came to such a pass that 
the two women quarreled, and Rita so far forgot her- 
self as to fling a sneer about marriage-lines at her 
friend. Ann came running to Rene for comfort, and 
tried to enrage him at the tale of such base ingratitude. 
He was not to be enraged, however, for he had been 
pondering the subject of gratitude and come to the 
conclusion that he who lays claim to it forfeits it. He 
tried to explain to Ann that she had overdone her 
kindness and should have known the moment to with- 
draw. She was dismayed. 

277 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“Of course,” she cried, “you would take her side 
against mine.” 

“It isn’t a question of sides. You couldn’t expect 
her to let you go on running her house forever.” 

“A shiftless little fool like that! I wouldn’t have 
minded if she’d only said Thank you.’ Not a word 
did she say, but just flung you in my face. And now 
you say she’s right! I wish you’d never come, I do.” 

“Ann, dear, don’t be silly.” 

“I do wish it with all my heart and soul. You’ve 
made me be different. You’ve made me want to do 
good things, and then you’re nothing but a shadow 
slipping away. And, oh! it does hurt so.” 

“Dear, dear Ann, don’t you see that Rita wanted to 
get rid of you and didn’t know how to without a 
quarrel ?” 

“Why should she want to get rid of me? Nice mess 
she’d have been in without you and me.” 

“You go and see her to-morrow, and you’ll find her 
all right.” 

“I don’t want to see her ever again, nasty ungrateful 
rubbish !” 

“Then I’ll go and see her.” 

“You won’t see me again if you do. I can up and 
off when I like. We’re not married, remember.” 

“You leave me nothing to say. I’ve learned a good 
deal from the people in the mews, but not their way of 
quarreling.” 

He had been irritated into the reproof and was sorry 
as soon as it was uttered. She was furious. Never 
before had she lost her temper with him, though they 
278 


VISION 


had had "wordy passages. Now she turned and rent 
him : 

“ I don’t believe you’re a man at all, and I don’t 
believe you’ve got a heart. Squabble, you call it? I 
wish you would. You sit there with your fishy eyes 
staring at nothing, thinking, thinking, thinking. 
What’s the good of it all? Who’s right and who’s 
wrong? What’s it matter? If you loved me I’d be 
right whatever I did. Go on! Look at me! You 
don’t know me, don’t you? I’m the woman you’ve 
been living with these last two years. That’s who I 
am. If you’re sick of me, why don’t you say so? I’m 
no lady, thank God. I do know when I’m not wanted. 
I’m not going to stay with any man on God’s earth 
when he doesn’t want me. I’ve nearly left you time 
and time again, when you’ve looked at me like that.” 

He brushed his hand across his eyes. He was feel- 
ing sick and dazed. She looked so ugly. 

She went on : 

“I’ve put up with things because of you, I have. 
You don’t know what people say, or care. You won’t 
never know what they say, you’re that blooming inno- 
cent, thinking everybody means well. I’ve put up with 
things, and been glad of ’em, and I’ve put up with 
things from you that I couldn’t have believed any 
woman would ever have to put up with ” 

He said quietly : 

“Have you done ?” 

She gasped at him, tried to stop, but because she 
had begun to enjoy her fury, she forced the note and 
screamed at him: 


279 


YOUNG EARNEST 


'You want a virgin saint to live with you, not a 
woman.” 

Now she stopped, aghast at herself, horrified by the 
pain and disgust she had brought into his eyes. He 
could hardly speak, and jerked out : 

“I didn’t know. ... I didn’t know I’d done all that 
to you, Ann. I’m so terribly sorry. I seem to make 
a mess of things always.” 

She had turned her back on him, and he knew that 
she was weeping. He had no desire to console her. 
He wished only to get away. Neither could break the 
heavy silence that followed the storm. He left her, 
though he could hardly move, so acute was his physical 
exhaustion. Groping his way along the wall of the 
mews, he counted the doors until he came to Kilner’s. 
The rooms were empty. He flung himself on the bed 
and lay chilled and racked, thinking only of Ann weep- 
ing, unmoved, detached, feeling neither sorrow nor 
hate. She had robbed him of all capacity of emotion, 
all power of thought. The storm had been so un- 
looked for. Rita was so remote from them. Why 
should Rita and anything she said or did have let loose 
upon them so violent a convulsion? 

Ann weeping, Ann silent, so appallingly silent. Her 
silence weighed on him more than her words. Desire 
grew in him slowly and painfully, a desire to under- 
stand. He remembered exactly what he had said to 
her, and the words seemed meaningless. Her silence 
had killed them. They were genuine as he spoke them. 
Speaking them, he had surmounted his disgust and 
horror at her rage. Yet there was an even more burn- 
280 


VISION 


ing fury in her silence. She was weeping; Ann, the 
gay little comrade, was weeping, and her tears had 
moved him not at all-.* 

He began to think again, and to think with a new 
power. His body was cold and aching. His mind 
seemed to leave it. His mind played about Ann, the 
figure of Ann, weeping in silence. It played malicious- 
ly about her, stripped her, let down her hair, revealed 
her nakedly as woman, short-legged, wide-hipped, 
small-breasted, not so unlike a boy save for the excres- 
cences and distortions created by her physical func- 
tions. That was too horrible. With an effort of will 
he brushed it aside, wrenched away from its fascina- 
tion. Her individuality was restored to her and a little 
warmth crept into his vision of her. He was not 
sensible of her charm, and he was free of all lover’s 
memory of her attraction. His mind went probing 
into hers, saw how it delighted in impressions, but 
could make no store of them ; how her delight had been 
increased by love and how she had used her love to 
aggravate her sensibility to the point of intoxication; 
how the fierce hunger for intoxication had desired to 
feed on him, and how her love for him had made her 
desire to bring him to the same condition. He saw 
her innocence; how free she was of deliberate purpose 
and set greed ; how animal and yet how little sensual ; 
and how she was snared in her own ignorance of love 
and its ways. Trapped she was and baffled. She 
could have been so happy with a mate as ignorant as 
herself, as willing to be snared. They could so easily 
have perished together, and sunk into resignation, she 
281 


YOUNG EARNEST 


and such a mate. And inexorable nature had made 
her fruitful, to bring forth in her rage, when she would 
be spent with tearing at the meshes that had caught 
her. She would go on tearing, tearing, and he could 
spare her nothing. His strength could not sustain her. 
She desired only his weakness, to have him with her, 
caught and struggling; to have him by her side, spent 
and broken, to take comfort in the child. 

He seemed to himself to be so near this fate, so 
nearly caught, that he cried out : 

“1 will not! I will not!” 

For a moment the words startled him and shook 
him out of his stupor. Then his agony came back 
with a redoubled fury, and in the desperate hope of 
fighting it back he let words come tumbling out, hurl- 
ing them from him : 

“I will not be used for a creation in which I know 
no joy. I will not cloak brute creation with a seeming 
joy distilled by mind and time and custom. I will not 
be used up and broken and cover indecency with false 
decency, nor be comforted with the life that has stolen 
my own. My life shall give life, and for the giving 
have only the more to give. That which I have done 
with the spirit not awakened in me is done and no 
longer a part of me. That which the spirit does in me 
lives on forever and ever.” 

ICilner found him lying in the darkness, staring with 
vacant eyes. He was terrified. Rene looked so death- 
ly. He sat by his side and chafed his hands, and ca- 
ressed him tenderly, soothed him, spoke to him in little 
282 


VISION 


staccato phrases, and went on with them until he 
seemed to listen : 

“The lamps aren’t lit to-night. It’s very dark. Do 
you hear? Stars shining. Wonderful stars. Better 
than lamps. I say, stars are better than lamps.” 

At length Rene said : 

“Yes. Stars are much better than lamps. Lamps 
are only to prevent people committing a nuisance. 
Stars don’t give a damn if they do.” 

“I quite agree,” said Kilner. “Drink this brandy.” 

When he had drunk, Rene said : 

“Women ought to be like stars.” 

“Rubbish!” grunted Kilner. “Women ought to be 
like women.” 

“I’ve been trying to understand things.” 

“Awful mistake. A fellow like you can’t understand 
things. He can only live them. That’s why you have 
such a rotten time. No power of expression. If only 
you could write or draw, or play some instrument — 
though I hate music. But if you could, you wouldn’t 
be you.” 

“You’re a clever fellow, Kilner. I wish you’d tell 
me what’s the matter with me.” 

“Too much vitality for a society which dislikes it, as 
it always will as long as it prefers the shadow to the 
substance, bad art to good, and imitations of things to 
the things themselves.” 

Rene looked disappointed. Kilner patted his hand. 

“Too intellectual! Personal, then. What’s wrong 
with you, my friend, is that you are out for the grand 
passion. It doesn’t happen more than about once in 
283 


YOUNG EARNEST 


two hundred years. Why ? I don’t know. It depends 
on two people, you see, and I suppose two first-rate 
people don’t often meet. The rest of us lie about our 
love affairs to make them tolerable. I lied that night 
when I first met you. I wanted to make an impres- 
sion. The only reason for lying I ever knew. I told 
you my one decent love affair lasted for five weeks. It 
didn’t. It lasted for exactly five seconds, the time of 
the kiss under the almond-tree in which it was born 
and died. Nothing more was possible, she being she 
and I being I. It was a decent business because we 
didn’t try to pretend it was anything else. So far as 
it went, it was so true as to make falseness impossible. 
We shall both live on that for the rest of our lives. 
Just enough to make marriage impossible for us. We 
shall both marry someone else for company, and as a 
defense against a growing tendency to promiscuity. 
You don’t seem to have that tendency. Life’s too 
serious for you. You are incapable of a love affair 
without an attempt to make it a spiritual thing. Where 
we get excited, you get exalted, which is infernally 
bad luck on the average woman. Feelin’ better?” 

“Yes,” said Rene, “but you do talk a lot of drivel.” 

“Hurray!” cried Kilner. “He’s beginning to find 
himself. I wonder if you’ll ever see how funny you 
are?” 

“I wonder?” said Rene, and he turned over, and in 
one moment was fast asleep. 


XII 


SETTLEMENT 

Our conscious actions are as a drop in the sea as com- 
pared with our unconscious ones. 

A NN came round in the morning, very petulant and 
^ angry because she had lost half-a-sovereign. 
This had so upset her that, once she was satisfied that 
Rene was not so ill as he looked, she had no other in- 
terest, and could only give vent to her annoyance in 
little splutters of irritation. She sat by Rene and 
talked about it until he had to ask her to go away. 

“All right,” she said, “I know when I’m not wanted. 
But I do hate doing a thing like that. I can’t think 
how I did it.” 

“There was once,” said Kilner, seeing how she was 
fretting his friend, “a crooked woman who lived in a 
crooked house, and she lost a crooked sixpence.” 

“I know that story. Only it wasn’t a crooked wom- 
an. It was Mrs. Vinegar, and she lived in a bottle, 
and she lost a sixpence and broke the bottle sweeping 
for it. Oh, Renny, he thinks I’m like Mrs. Vinegar! 
I am awful, I know.” 

Rene smiled at Kilner. Ann said : 

285 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“If there's any overtime to-day, I’ll take it. Will 
you — be back to-night?” 

“I think I'll stay here if you don’t mind.” 

“Will you — You’ll let me come and see you?” She 
seemed to appeal to Kilner. He nodded. His con- 
sent comforted her, and she rose to go. Rene took her 
hand and said : 

“Ann, dear, I want you to believe that whatever 
happens I am always your friend.” 

She answered : 

“I saw Rita this morning. She's all right.” 

“That's good.” 

“I was awful, wasn't I ? Something seemed to come 
over me. I didn’t want to be a beast, really I didn’t. 
Only I do hate it when you can say what you mean and 
I can’t. I do want to make it up, Renny. Only it 
doesn’t seem like ordinary rows, does it ?” 

“Come and see me to-night, Ann. You might tell 
old Martin I can’t take the car out to-day.” 

“You’re not ill, are you?” 

“No. Only what you’d call queer.” 

Kilner followed her out. 

“What’s the matter with him?” she asked. 

“You.” 

“Oh !” She was dismayed. 

“I don’t mean it in any insulting sense. His affec- 
tions and yours don’t work in the same way.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“That’s it.” 

“I do understand more than you think, Mr. Kilner. 
If a feller wants to leave a girl, I say she’s a fool to try 
286 


SETTLEMENT 


and keep him. I don’t believe Renny’s that sort. I 
don’t believe he’d see a girl left.” 

“He’s done it once.” 

“Oh 1 Her ! That’s different. She wasn’t fond of 
him like I am.” 

“You don’t know.” 

“Don’t I ? Besides, she was one of your ladies. I’m 
sorry for them, always keeping one eye lifting on what 
other ladies are going to think.” 

“Suppose he did leave you.” 

“That’s not your business, Mr. Kilner. If he did, 
I’d know you’d been making him upset with your 
talk.” 

“It isn’t all talk.” 

“What is it, then?” 

“Something just as deep as what you call love ; prob- 
ably deeper.” 

They had walked down the street leading to the 
mews, and now came to the corner. Ann stopped and 
stood hesitating. Her hand went up, and she pulled at 
her lower lip and shifted her feet uneasily. 

“I known girls be left,” she muttered, “girls like me. 
They pulled through somehow. But I don’t think 
they was fond of the men like I am of him. And you 
say he’s fond of me. I know there isn’t anybody 
else.” 

“Is that all you care about?” 

“He’s never looked at anybody else. I’d feel better 
if he did. What call has he to go and make trouble if 
there isn’t anybody else? Lots of girls would have 
chucked work when they’d found a man like that to 
287 


YOUNG EARNEST 


live on. They get sick of being on their own. I’ve 
been on my own since I was sixteen, and I couldn’t 
give it up for anybody.” 

“And yet you expect him to give it up ?” 

“No, I don’t. I expect him to stand by me, that’s 
all. I have my feelings too. He’s not the only person 
in the world with feelings. I’m very fond of him, Mr. 
Kilner, but sometimes I think he’s a bit soft, and I do 
hate a softy. Ooh! I’ll be late.” 

She walked swiftly away. Very young she looked. 
She moved not gracefully, but with a birdlike energy 
that was pleasing. Kilner, surveying her figure, ap- 
proved of it, until he came to her shoulders. They 
were slightly stooping and rounded, and she swung 
them awkwardly as she walked. 

“Ugly and weak,” said Kilner to himself. “Stoop- 
ing over an infernal machine. Taken something out 
of her. Not her spirit. Given her a cramped habit of 
body. Nonsense. No good trying to account for it. 
He is simply not in love with her, never has been, nor 
she with him.” 

He went up to his room and found it empty. No 
Rene. No sign of him at Ann’s. He had not been 
seen at the yard. His car was out with a temporary 
driver. A child in the mews had seen him in the main 
road. He had gone into a tobacconist’s and then 
climbed on a bus. The tobacconist remembered his 
coming in to get change for a sovereign. He looked 
rather strange and excited. “It’s a fine day,” said the 
tobacconist. “Fine, be blowed,” replied Rene. “It’s 
288 


SETTLEMENT 


as empty as hell.” “I wouldn’t say that,” said the to- 
bacconist, “with the sun shining.” “But I do say it,” 
insisted Rene. “You couldn’t call that shining.” And 
then another customer came in. 

Kilner had some knowledge of his friend’s ways and 
haunts, but he sought in vain. 

He met Ann in the evening with his news. She 
looked scared and protested : 

“He’s gone to his home. He must have gone to his 
home. You could tell he was always fond of his 
mother.” 

“What makes you think that ?” 

“He wouldn’t go anywhere else.” 

“Did he talk about his home ?” 

“Hardly a word. But he told me he’d met his father. 
He’s gone to his home. He’ll be back.” 

“I don’t feel so sure about that.” 

“Well, I know he’d never go back to the old life, 
books and all that. He said he never would. He said 
he’d learned more about econ — What d’you call 
it?” 

“Economics.” 

“That’s it. He said he’d learned more through be- 
ing with me than in four years’ work at books and 
lectures.” 

“I should call that an exaggerated statement.” 

“He’ll come back. I know he wouldn’t see me left.” 

They met Martin rolling to his home. When they 
told him, he screwed a chuckle out of himself and 
squeezed his eyes up tight. 

289 


YOUNG EARNEST 


‘Unsettled,” he said, “onsettled. I seen it a-coming 
on. Thinks I to myself, I thinks, when I sees him 
coming in in the morning: ‘Brewing up for trouble, 
you are, young man ; but whether it’ll be Glory to God 
or Down with them as pays wages, or what, I don’t 
know.’ I was going to say he’d better have a holiday, 
and now he’s snoofed it.” 

“He’ll come back,” said Ann. 

“Don’t you go counting on that, my pretty. He 
ain’t our class, and never could be. You’ve only to see 
him drink to know that. If he was our class he’d be 
worse’n the rest of us. Don’t you go counting on 
that.” 

“He’ll come back. He ain’t a sneak.” 

“When it comes to women,” said Martin, “any 
man’s neither more nor less than what he can be. But 
if you find it lonely waiting you can come and sit with 
me. I ain’t a-going to see you let down, my pretty, not 
for want of money or a helping hand. If your heart’s 
set on him, I can’t do nothing there; but, Lor’ bless 
you, hearts ain’t everything.” 

“Good for you, Mr. Martin,” said Kilner. 

“Oh, I know a thing or two.” The fat man winked. 
“You don’t have to do with ’orses for nothing. I had 
a ’orse once took a uncommon fancy to a goat there 
was in the mews. Had to see it every day. The goat 
was sold, and that there ’orse pined away. I kept on 
a-telling of him that no goat in the world was wortl* 
losing a feed of oats for, and at last he got so precious 
hungry he believed it, and I never did see a ’orse so 
glad to eat. Fancies come and go, but your belly lets 
290 


SETTLEMENT 


you know it’s there till you die. Will you come in, 
too, Mr. Kilner?” 

“No, thanks. I must get to bed early. Work in the 
morning. ,, 

When Kilner had gone, old Martin said to Ann with 
an affectionate touch on her arm : 

“That young man has a ’ead screwed on his shoul- 
ders.” 

“He’s all head,” said Ann, “and I hate him.” 

“Lor’! There’s talking. How women do like to 
make a man wriggle. I never was much in the wrig- 
gling line myself, not being the build for it. But a 
’ead’s worth having, too. I never had much ’ead my- 
self. Too affectionate myself. What a pretty little 
thing you was, to be sure. Feeling it bad, my pretty?” 

“Hellish bad,” replied Ann. 

“There, there.” 

“I never thought I’d feel anything so bad. I want 
to hate him, but I can’t. I do hate that Kilner. I’d 
like to see him dead.” 

“There, there. ’Orses has wunnerful strong dis- 
likes, too.” 

Ann said : 

“It’s enough to make a woman scream, the way men 
talk.” 

Old Martin’s huge face expanded in astonishment. 
He reached out his hand for a pipe, filled it, conveyed 
it to his mouth, and sank into a brooding silence. He 
broke it at length to say : 

“Women has a great scorn o’ men, and I don’t know 
but what they deserve it.” 


291 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“If there’s one thing I hate,” said Ann, “it’s being 
dished. I suppose I always knew it couldn’t last. It 
was too wonderful. You don’t know how kind he was 
in his ways, never wanting anything you didn’t want 
yourself. And that was awful, too, because it made 
you afraid to want anything. It seemed to shame you. 
He was always shaming me, and I did feel awful some- 
times. But it was lovely when we went for rides on 
tops of buses.” 

This appreciation of Rene’s qualities as a housemate 
seemed to bore old Martin, for he took up a newspaper 
and began making notes and calculations from the bet- 
ting columns. 

“Hullo!” he said. “This must be some connection 
of his. ‘Miss Janet Fourmy of Elgin, N.B.’ ‘Miss 
Fourmy,’ it says, ‘was a distinguished German and 
Italian scholar, a Goethe translator, a contributor to 
the Scottish Encyclo — ’ what you may call it. ‘In her 
youth she was familiar with the famous Edinburgh 
circle which gathered round Maga and did much valu- 
able philological work, and was for a time governess 
to the late Archbishop of Canterbury who never ceased 
to express his admiration for her intellect and gifts. 
She had many friendships with the interesting figures 
of her day, and it is believed that she has left some 
record of them.” 

“He told me about her,” said Ann. “He used to go 
and stay with her, and she used to read an Italian book 
called Dante, with the pages upside down. She was 
very old, but good to him, and she thought Lord John 
Russell was in love with her.” 


292 


SETTLEMENT 


“Lord who?” 

“I don’t know who he was, but that’s the name. 
Renny says it was her*weakness. She lived all alone, 
and it’s very dreary in the winter in Scotland. She 
had met a lot of lords in her time, and she liked to 
remember more than she’d met. And she’d never mar- 
ried, and Renny says she thought it sounded well to 
account for it by saying that Lord John Russell was in 
love with her. It wasn’t always him — — ” 

“Well ! the things women do think of. I shall say I 
remained a widower because of Madame Tussaud.” 

“She was fond of Renny,” said Ann, and that 
seemed on her lips the noblest possible epitaph for old 
Janet. She added : 

“Perhaps that’s where he’s gone.” 

“I shouldn’t think so. It costs a pile o’ money to go 
to Elgin, N.B. It’s a good deal north o’ Bedford, 
which is the farthest I ever went with the ’orses. That 
was in eighteen-eighty-four.” 

He settled down for a story. Fortunately for Ann, 
he was allowed to get no further than clearing his 
throat, when he was cut short by the entry of Casey. 

“Evening, miss,” said he. “I seen your young man 
in the neighborhood of Holland Park, standing on a 
street corner. I nodded to him, but he looked clean 
through me. Very queer, I thought. We’ve been 
good pals. When I came back an hour later he was 
still there. I was empty that time. So I stopped. 
‘Keeping the pavement warm,’ I said, cheerful like. 
‘Trying to warm myself,’ said he. ‘Draughty weather 
to be doing that in the streets,’ I said. ‘You go home, 

293 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Casey/ he said. ‘Oh, well/ I thought, ‘we’re all fools, 
and every fool to his own folly/ So I left him. I 
came home that way just now and he’d gone.” 

“We been talking about him all evening,” said Mar- 
tin, “me and Annie here.” 

“He’s one of the best hands at an engine that ever 
I saw. And that brings me to what I want to talk to 
you about, guvnor. I been to see the doctor again, 
and he says London’s doing me a bit of no good, and 
if I go on with it, it’ll do me in. Now I’ve got an 
idea. Leastways it isn’t all my idea but mostly hisn, 
young Fourmy’s.” 

“If you knew about ’orses, there’s a good livery at 
Barnet.” 

Casey persisted: 

“My idea is this : There’s just a few want motors 
in London. Something’s happening in the place. Well, 
one night in the cab-rank young Fourmy, Young Ear- 
nest, as we call him, took out the map of fifty miles 
round, and he pointed out how the railways go out of 
London like spokes of a wheel. Between the spokes, 
he says, is where London is going to live if it is made 
possible, and motors ought to make it possible. He 
says if you choose your place properly, so as to link 
up the main roads and two railways, you’d be bound 
to make a living. There’s enough houses already. 
Soon there’ll be factories and works out there. 
Then there’ll be more houses. I didn’t believe it at 
first. I said: ‘But if all the people live out there, 
what’s to become of dear old London?’ ‘London,’ he 
says, ‘will be a clearing-house and capital, a real cen- 
294 


SETTLEMENT 


ter.’ I didn’t understand altogether what he was talk- 
ing about, but I’ve been out to see for myself, and what 
he says is happening. All the little country towns have 
cinemas and new shops, and in the suburbs there are 
whole streets of houses empty. I’m no good for the 
West End traffic, and I want to try my luck at the 
other, if I can get hold of any capital.” 

“Ah ! Capital !” said Martin. “That wants a bit of 
getting, capital does.” 

Clearly he had not understood a word of what Casey 
was talking about. He had his own idea of London, 
and was not going to change it or admit the possibility 
of change. From one year’s end to the other he never 
left the mews. His yard might actually be filled with 
motor-cars, but for him it was really a sanctuary of 
the ’orses. Their smell still clung about it. The one 
horse he had left had little else to do but provide the 
smell. 

However, he liked Casey, and was distressed to find 
him taking to ideas : 

“Don’t you go worrying your head about what is 
and is not, Casey. Heads wasn’t made for that. Heads 
was made to have eyes in, and mouths, the same as 
’orses. All you got to do, all any man’s got to do, is 
to earn his keep and pay his shot, same as a ’orse. 
When he’s done that, ’e’s got to behave nice to them as 
is in stable with him. And every now and then he 
gets his little canter and may be turned out to 
grass.” 

“I’m no Nebuchadnezzar,” retorted Casey, “and I 
want to be on my own.” 


295 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“No man can be on his own if he ain’t got no cap- 
ital.” 

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” 

“Ah!” said Martin mysteriously, to baffle Casey’s 
obstinacy. “Ah! that wants getting, that does. If it 
was ’orses now ” 

Casey saw that it was hopeless. Nothing would 
budge the fat man from his yard. Cars ! They were 
a necessary evil, not to be encouraged beyond the limit 
of necessity. 

Ann wanted to know more about Rene, but Casey 
could tell her nothing. He repeated his eulogy of 
young Fourmy’s skill as a driver, and added : 

“We’ve got has-been gentlemen on the ranks, scores 
of them. But they’re not like him. It’s a treat to hear 
him talk, it is. They wanted him, a lot of them did, to 
pitch into the union, but he doesn’t seem to think much 
of trade-unions. He says they can’t do anything yet, 
in the way of fighting I mean, because they want to 
make us all middle-classes, and that ain’t good enough. 
If I could get him to go along with me !” 

Ann said : 

“He hasn’t been home all day. Didn’t he say any- 
thing to you?” 

“He did say one day : T’m getting sick of this, cart- 
ing men and women like cattle.’ It seems to have got 
on his nerves a bit. Too good for it, I suppose.” 

“It would be a good thing,” said she, “if we went 
into the country, though I don’t know what I’d do. I 
do love London and all the lights and that, and the 
shops.” 


296 


SETTLEMENT 


Said Casey: 

“You should see the nights in Africa. Some parts 
you can walk a hundred miles and never see a light. 
Nothing but stars, and fewer of them than we have 
here. Flat and empty as the sea some of the country, 
going on forever and ever in the darkness.” 

Ann shivered: 

“Ugh!” she said. “It makes me think of Renny. I 
don’t know why. He’d like it, I think.” 

“Yes. I think he likes big things.” 

It was late. Near twelve o’clock. The lamps in 
the mews flickered as Ann returned to her rooms. The 
post had brought a note from Rene, posted in the 
north of London. He said : “Please tell old Martin I 
shall be away three days. I will come back then. I 
think I have it all settled in my mind. I want to get it 
clear for you, too. You have been so good to me, my 
dear, and I owe you so much. — R.” 

There was also a letter for him. She struggled 
against the desire to open it, and conquered it for that 
night. The next morning, however, the temptation 
was too strong for her, and she steamed it open. It 
was from a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh to say 
that the late Miss Janet Fourmy had left Rene the 
residue of her estate, which, after certain small leg- 
acies had been paid, would amount to nearly four 
thousand pounds. The house in Scotland would also 
be his, and all the deceased lady’s personal effects. 

Ann went to her work that day shivering with ex- 
citement. Rene’s enormous wealth frightened her. 
She could put up a fight against his intelligence, his 
297 


YOUNG EARNEST 


brooding, his silence; but against this she felt power- 
less, and knew within her heart that her battle was 
already lost. 

She was a forewoman now, and she gave the girls 
under her the worst day they ever remembered. 


BOOK THREE 


CATHLEEN BENTLEY 


So between them love did shine 
That the truth saw his right 
Flaming in the phoenix’ sight, 
Either was the other’s mine. 

Property was thus appalled 
That the self was not the same; 
Single nature’s double name 
Neither two nor one was called. 


I 


MEETING 

He trieth the sea after many shipwrecks; and beats still 
on that door which he never saw opened. 

W HEN Ann and Kilner left Rene, he was filled 
with anger against them, first of all, fleetingly, 
with the petulance of a sick man at being left alone 
without his having expressed a wish for it, and then at 
their treating him as a sick man when he was nothing 
of the kind, but only passing through a crisis in which 
not even sympathy could help him much. Kilner was 
so cocksure just because he had a peculiar delight in 
putting paint on canvas; and Ann — poor dear little 
Ann! — she loved to have things and people at her 
mercy and to keep them there. And she could make no 
attempt to understand them, because if she did so, that 
would be to believe in them and let them be free to 
work out their own destiny. He knew how little free- 
dom she would even grant himself, and his mind, 
spurred by revolt into high activity, went straight to 
its mark, the place where freedom most clearly prom- 
ised — absurdly, the door through which he had seen 
Rachel Bentley pass. That led to his clearest and 
most beautiful memory, the days in Scotland, the 
301 


YOUNG EARNEST 


happy boyhood when delight had grown from year to 
year, to flower at last in the coming of Cathleen. Very 
vivid was his recollection of their first meeting in his 
aunt’s house : himself very coltish and shy, she charm- 
ingly self-conscious and alert. It was the first year the 
Bentleys had taken the big house, and she had come 
round by the road. His aunt had asked him to shoV 
Cathleen the short cut through the woods. She chat- 
tered until his shyness overcame him, and then they 
walked in a miserable silence. He comforted himself 
by regarding her as a little girl, which to his young 
prudishness made his involuntary adoration of her 
beauty legitimate. He could never take his eyes off 
her, and she began to amuse herself with him and try 
her coquetries upon his oversensitiveness. He suffered 
terribly. She was caught in her own wiles, and she 
too suffered. It was a relief to both when, the first 
year, they parted. 

The next year she was not so lovely, and had lost or 
disguised her wildness. It was not long before he dis- 
covered that he could rouse it in her. Then began 
their meetings in the woods. 

At the thought of her now his affection for Ann, his 
warm regard for Kilner faded away. They were 
meaningless without her. He knew not where she 
was. His only clue was Rachel. Cathleen, too, might 
go to that house. He would wait until she came. If 
the worst came to the worst, he would ask Rachel. He 
must satisfy himself that he was not covering that 
sweet past with illusions. The meeting with Rachel 
had brought it all flooding back to bring him to acute 

3° 2 


MEETING 


discontent with the present. It was one thing to sigh 
sentimentally over happy days. To do that was to 
obscure them. It was quite another thing to have 
happy days demanding egress through his life, grow- 
ing through the thick-set years like a tree through a 
wall. 

He stole away directly Kilner and Ann were out of 
sight, found he had only a sovereign, and turned into 
the tobacconist’s round the corner for change. It was 
also a news-agent’s, and he bought a newspaper and, as 
he was borne along by the bus, read of his aunt’s death. 
Strange, he thought, that all his thoughts should be 
clustered round her house just then. The wise old 
woman, with her dear foibles: what had her long life 
been? The end of it was sweet and true and full of 
grace. Not only his mother had been helped in her 
troubles. That he knew. The old lady’s meager in- 
come became supple and elastic under the touch of 
generous charity that never spoiled its gifts with the 
demand for gratitude. She once said to Rene : “Better 
be ungrateful than cramped with gratitude.” Read 
Dante upside down she might in her old age, but she 
could quote him from her heart: 

Ed io a lui : Io mi son un che, quando 
Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo 
che ditta dentro, vo significando. 

She had made Rene learn a little Italian and get that by 
heart. It began now to have a meaning for him, and 
he repeated it to himself as he came near the road in 
which stood Rachel’s house. 

303 


YOUNG EARNEST 


He took up his stand at the corner and waited. He 
had been there nearly an hour when a car drove up 
and a spruce, middle-aged gentleman got out, walked 
up the path, and admitted himself with a key. Ra- 
chel’s husband? Far too old for her. 

Another hour’s waiting. A young woman came 
along the road. Rene thought for a moment it was 
she, and his heart leaped. She did not see him. She 
turned in at the gate, knocked at the door, and was 
admitted. No, he decided, that was not Cathleen. 

Then he told himself he was a fool, that only by 
the unlikeliest chance would she be there to-day. He 
walked away, but was back again in ten minutes. In 
another twenty the door opened and the young woman 
came out. She stood for a moment at the gate. It 
could not be Cathleen, she was too tall and slender. In 
his eager hope and curiosity he moved toward her. 
He was not a yard away from her when she turned 
and their eyes met. Neither stirred. They were 
stilled by the wonder of it. A spell was on them, and 
slowly in both grew the dreadful knowledge that a 
word or a gesture would break it. In his heart Rene 
prayed : “Oh ! let it break into happiness,” and his will 
leaped into being and decided that it must be so and he 
laughed. She said: 

“Oh! Rene!” 

It was no echo of the old cry, but the same filled 
with a new music. 

Their hands met in the conventional salute. She 
said : 

“I have been thinking of you so much.” 

304 


MEETING 


“Much?” said he. “I have been thinking of nothing 
else. And I was not sure that it was you when you 
went in just now.” .. 

“I saw you, but I didn’t recognize you. Rachel told 
me she had met you.” 

“Did she tell you where?” 

“I had to dig it out of her. She was very hushed 
and secret. Rachel is funny. I’ve been looking at 
taxi-drivers ever since. They are a very plain lot of 
men.” 

“Where do you live now ?” 

“In Bloomsbury. I am working for my living, you 
know.” 

“I’m glad of that, but I shouldn’t have thought it 
necessary.” 

“My father died.” 

“I heard that.” 

“He left nearly all his money to another woman : an- 
other family. I suppose he liked them better than us. 
I had a row with my mother over it. It appears she 
knew all about it and never minded. Only when it 
came to her having less money than she thought, she 
developed a horrid conscience and denounced my 
father to us. I hadn’t thought about such things, but 
I was fond of my father, and it wasn’t fair to vilify 
him after his death. I didn’t understand it in the 
very least, but I stood up for him, and of course I said 
a lot of stupid, cruel things. I went to see the other 
woman. She was quite old, older than mother, rather 
vulgar, but jolly and warm-hearted and kind, and, 
from the way she talked, I could see she really did love 
305 


YOUNG EARNEST 

my father and was very proud of him. You know, he 
made his own way. His father was a barber in Rick- 
ham, in Hertfordshire. She came from there, too. I 
told mother I had seen her, and she was furious, and 
said I was too young to know anything about such 
things. I pointed out that she had told me, and she 
declared she never imagined that I would understand. 
Then she put it all down to my taste for low company, 
meaning you. That annoyed me, and I told her you 
were a very learned and brilliant person. She said 
Thrigsby wasn’t a real university, and its degrees did 
not count. You weren’t a gentleman, and it was ter- 
rible how all the professions were being invaded by 
little whipper-snappers with a thin coating of book 
knowledge. So I asked her point-blank why she mar- 
ried my father, and she said he was extremely success- 
ful. Father had left us each two hundred pounds. I 
asked for that, and said I would earn my own living. 
I should have a year in which to look round. She said 
no one would ever marry me if I worked. I told her 
that the little I had learned of her life didn’t make me 
anxious to be married. She became very solemn on 
that, and told me I couldn’t possibly remain unmar- 
ried, because I was too pretty. I said I thought wom- 
en could look after themselves, and obviously other 
arrangements were possible, and sometimes more 
profitable. That was an odious thing to say, but we 
had irritated each other out of all decency, and for 
vulgarity the other woman was an angel to us. I 
couldn’t stay with my mother; I had said too much. 
She knew if I stayed it would make it hard for her to 
3 °6 


MEETING 


play the devoted widow ; and also, if she could be the 
broken-hearted parent, it would give her a good start. 
She pounced on that, and let me go with her most 
lugubrious blessing and most ghoulish doubts. She 
prophesied almost gleefully that I would go to the bad, 
and helped me along by treating me as if I had already 
done so. Then I plunged into the wicked world. It 
was very disappointing. I had been led to suppose that 
no woman was safe alone. The wicked world has 
absolutely disregarded me. Occasionally some miser- 
able little man or pale-faced boy has sidled up to me 
in the street and said, Excuse me, miss’ — or ‘Haven’t 
we met before?’ They don’t alarm me. I say I won’t 
excuse them or that I haven’t met them, and they lqok 
very comically cast down, and say ‘Beg pardon’ and 
shuffle off. Sometimes I am so sorry for them that I 
feel inclined to run after them and tell them to cheer 
up, because it’s quite easy to find affection if you only 
set about it the right way. They think it’s adventure 
they want, but it isn’t. It’s only affection, some sort 
of human contact. I understood that, because I too 
was lonely. But those poor little men were so dull. I 
can’t bear being dull, and I hate to see it in others; I 
hate to see them settling down to it. That’s what 
mother wanted me to do. I might have done it, too, 
if father hadn’t died. You know it seems quite pleas- 
ant to flirt and spend money, and find a husband and 
go on flirting and spending money. I’d never seen 
anyone die before, and it did make me feel ashamed. 
All of us were changed by it for a little. We became 
very shy of each other, and wanted to be nice, and 
307 


YOUNG EARNEST 


began to talk about the things we really thought and 
felt inside ourselves. Then all that slipped away, and 
we were just the same as before until we talked about 
father’s money, and then we were all angry. I sup- 
pose I hadn’t quite recovered from the strain of his 
death, because all that hurt me, and I could only think 
that I had really loved him, and might have loved him 
much more if things had been somehow different. And 
then when I saw that kind, common woman it opened 
up another kind of life going on apart from money 
and position and amusement, all the things we were so 
proud of. It horrified me at first, of course. It is 
dreadful because it is secret. In itself — Well, any- 
how, the only other thing in my life that was the least 
bit like it and could stand against it was my absurd 
little affair with you in Scotland. So you see, I 
had begun to think of you even before Rachel met 
you.” 

“Absurd !” Rene winced at the word. 

“Wasn’t it? I couldn’t have gone on with it, you 
know. It made me feel so helpless, and I felt so mean, 
letting you care so much. Your letters used to frighten 
me.” 

“But you cared for me ?” 

“Yes, yes; with one eye on you and the other on my 
mother.” 

Rene thought that over uneasily. He was discon- 
certed by this cool young woman. The enchantment 
of their meeting had roused and invigorated him, and, 
as usual, he had surrendered to the emotional flux of 
the encounter and was prepared for wonders, which, as 
308 


MEETING 


usual, did not come, or, at least, were not palpable. 
His eyes never left her face. It was lit with a smile of 
happiness, an incommunicable joy. 

Unconscious of their surroundings they had reached 
Kensington Gardens, and stood by the railings outside 
the Palace looking over the Round Pond. A gray 
October day: the trees gaunt and shabby; the heavy 
clouds tumbled and ragged. A cold northwest wind 
was blowing. Rene’s ungloved hands were blue. 

He gripped Cathleen’s arm, and she turned her 
happy eyes on him. 

“That’s good,” she said. “You were so strong 
then.” 

“Cathleen, I mustn’t lose sight of you again. You 
make me forget everything that has been, though that 
isn’t quite what I wanted to say.” 

“I shan’t lose sight of you, my dear. It doesn’t mat- 
ter what happens to either of us.” 

Rene said: 

“A good deal has happened to me.” 

“Tell me.” 

He told her. She received his story in silence. At 
last she said: 

“If you have a friend, it doesn’t matter what he 
does. All the same, it’s a nuisance.” 

“What is?” 

“The nuisance is that I’m a woman and you’re a 
man. Can friendship get over that ?” 

“Love,” said Rene, “can master everything. I love 
you. Shall we start with that? That’s clear, any- 
how.” 


309 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“Clear? Oh, yes; but it means being very certain 
about it and definite. Some of the charm of love goes. 
It is gone already from me.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t. I’m trying not to pity you. Oh, Rene, my 
foolish dear, I only want to love you and help you.” 

“It is you who are strong,” he said. 

She moved closer to him, so that she could just 
touch him. 

“We shall need all the strength we can get if we are 
not to be broken — strength and patience.” 

“I have a friend,” said he, “who thinks that all the 
confusion comes from sloth and fear.” 

“I should like to meet that friend.” 


II 


HAPPINESS 


Human lack of power in moderating and checking the 
emotions I call servitude. For a man who is submissive to 
his emotions is not in power over himself, but in the hands 
of fortune to such an extent that he is often constrained, 
although he may see what is better for him, to follow what 
is worse. — Spinoza’s Ethics . 



ATHLEEN lived in Bloomsbury with a friend of 


hers, a Miss Cleethorpe, who managed a hostel 
for young women, clerks, schoolmistresses, shop girls. 
Rene took her there after their long conversation in 
Kensington Gardens, and then, feeling the impossibil- 
ity of going back to Mitcham Mews, went up to Kent- 
ish Town to see his friend the sandy-haired railway 
porter. He had visited him once before, about a year 
ago, and could think of no one else with whom he 
might take refuge. The little man was delighted to 
see him : 

“It’s the sleeper!” he cried. “Lord! I’ve often 
wondered if you’d go off again, and when you told me 
you were in the taxi-driving, I said to myself : ‘Well, 
that’ll keep him awake.’ ” 

Yes. He would be glad to let him have a bed. 
Wanting to sleep, eh? He often felt like that himself : 




YOUNG EARNEST 


day after day, day after day, working, and the sub- 
urban traffic growing so fast that they couldn’t put on 
enough trains, and the station morning and evening 
was like Bedlam. 

“London,” he said, “is not what it was when I first 
came to it. I used to know all the regular gentlemen. 
But now — well, I tell you, they don’t have a nod for 
anyone. A bee-line for the city in the morning, and a 
bee-line for home in the evening. It makes you feel 
small, it does.” 

Rene sympathized with him. His days also had been 
devoted to impersonal service, and he had known the 
humiliation of it. 

Now his only desire was to see Cathleen again. To 
taste once more the vigor and keen energy with which 
her presence filled him. The thought of her was not 
enough. It roused a flood of emotion too strong for 
his unpracticed control. He warmed to the idea of her 
beauty. When he was with her her beauty was axio- 
matic, food for rejoicing without disturbance, a mere 
accident, one to be thankful for, yet no more than a 
light bidding to the thrilling pursuit of her elusive- 
ness. 

He had arranged to see her the next day in the even- 
ing. She worked as secretary in an Art School and 
was not free until after five. He spent the day in 
happy brooding over the coming delight of seeing her, 
and preparing with boyish dandyism for it. He had 
his hair cut and his chin shaved (he had grown a mus- 
tache), and he bought a clean shirt and collar. In a 
book shop he saw the anthology from which they had 

3 12 


HAPPINESS 


read together and could not resist going in and buying 
it. He was ashamed of himself when he had done that, 
and hid it away among the railway porter’s rather 
strange collection of books — More’s Utopia , The Mas- 
ter Christian , Marcus Aurelius , some books of Edward 
Carpenter’s, Foxes Book of Martyrs , and Arsene 
Lupin. 

Cathleen received him in her little bed-sitting-room 
at the top of the big grim house, which smelled of 
food, ink, and washing. She had made her den 
very pretty, and he recognized a picture he 
had given her long ago, and one or two trinkets 
that her mother had had in her boudoir in Scotland. 
The walls were of plain brown paper, and there 
were gay-colored stuffs by the windows and on 
the sofa. 

She took in his spruceness at a glance, was pleased 
by it, and laughed. 

“I must give you a buttonhole,” she said, “as I 
used to do. You look so wonderfully the same.” 

Rene trembled as she came to. him and pinned a 
flower in his coat. 

“Sit down,” she said. “I think we can talk better 
here.” 

Rene sat awkwardly on the sofa, she by the fire, 
which she stirred with the poker. 

“Well,” she said, “I feel rather a beast. I couldn’t 
help flirting with you a little yesterday. That’s got to 
stop” 

“Were you— flirting ?” 

“I was.” 

3 T 3 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I thought you were glad to see me — as glad as I 
was to see you.” 

“I was glad. I’d been having a foolishly miserable 
time. Living in this house is rather terrible with 
nothing but women, unmarried women. You don’t 
know. They come here young, many of them from 
the country. Then they go out to work in the day and 
come in in the evening. They haven’t enough money 
to pay for amusements. They’re too respectable to 
look for fun in the streets. They hardly dare have a 
man-friend, the others are so jealous, so rigid, so un- 
comprehending.” 

Rene said : 

“I had a feeling that my presence here was an of- 
fense.” 

Cathleen laughed: 

“That’s why I asked you. I thought it would do 
them good to see you. It did me so much good. I 
think I was getting infected by it. Lotta, my friend, 
escapes into the country now and then. She has a 
cottage. I go too sometimes, but her consolations are 
not mine. She has a garden and makes jams and 
fruit- wines. I want something more than that. I 
don’t want to console myself until I have to. If I 
were going to do that I might just as well have stayed 
with my mother. On the other hand, I don’t want to 
flirt with you, my friend. It wouldn’t be fair to you.” 

“What do you want, then?” 

“I want to be able to assume that we love each other. 
We can be frank then. It sounds uncomfortably in- 
tellectual, I know, but that will be less disastrous than 

3H 


HAPPINESS 


being uncomfortably emotional. You used to think 
about these things. You made me think. You haven’t 
stopped ?” 

“No. No. But I have such a longing for simplicity. 
I don’t know why there is all this fuss made about 
love.” 

“Because people will exploit the first excitement of 
it. Blake said: 

He who catches a joy as it flies 
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.” 

“I don’t know about that,” said Rene. “All I know 
is that I don’t want to let you go.” 

“But you may have to. We had a wonderful thing 
yesterday. We may not be able to rise to it again.” 

“I don’t care about that. I want you.” 

“Only because we had that moment yesterday.” 

“I don’t know why it is.” 

“But I know and I care, and I want to keep the 
memory of it. I don’t mind it’s being darkened by 
circumstances, if it must be, but I do mind it’s being 
spoiled by our own weakness. Men are always gird- 
ing at women for caring about nothing but love. They 
may gird fairly when we are untrue to love and let 
men belittle it with their impatience and arrogance. I 
ought not to say that to you, because you have tried, 
and I have done nothing but argue with myself.” 

“I think you have found something which I have 
not even begun to see.” 

“And argued about it.” 

3 T S 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I don’t see what else you could do.” 

Cathleen thrust silently at the fire and said savagely : 

“Oh! don’t you? I thought I was going to be so 
free with my two hundred pounds. Free, to do what? 
Walk in suffrage processions, break windows, insult 
policemen. I was free to do what I liked, but I liked 
nothing very much. I was too fastidious and could not 
take what came. Things did come. They lacked this 
or that necessary for my satisfaction. When my 
money was gone I had to creep into shelter away from 
the freedom I did not know how to use, and ask for 
work to keep myself alive, just like the girls and wom- 
en in this house, who keep themselves alive for noth- 
ing, so far as I can see, except the pleasure of being 
tired and bored and malicious. I was in a bad way, 
Rene, when I met you. I used to go to Rachel, who 
is the only one of the family who will have anything 
to do with me, and sometimes I envied her in her 
stupid, unhappy comfort. She doesn’t get on with her 
husband, but she has a nice house and two children 
who alternately infuriate and amuse her. That was 
impossible for me. I’d hate it, just living with a man 
to keep a household together. But then even now I’ve 
hated the alternative I had arrived at, this being hud- 
dled away with a lot of useless women. Working 
women! A genteel occupation to support a genteel 
existence. The selfishness of it! People like to pre- 
tend that motherhood solves everything for a woman. 
It may give occupation to a dependent woman, but 
why should it destroy her selfishness any more than 
another physical fact? If she insists on it too much, 

3 l6 


HAPPINESS 


it cannot do anything but accentuate her selfishness. 
Women can be just as greedy about motherhood as 
about eating or drinking or love, and they can just as 
easily spoil it with overindulgence. Don’t look so 
unhappy, Rene. I’m not arguing with you. I’ve had 
to think so much, and for months I haven’t had a soul 
to talk to like this. Even Lotta has her world so 
shaped and trim (she’s efficient, you see) that all my 
doubts and wonderings are just an annoyance to her, 
though no one could be kinder. I don’t know what I 
should have done without her. It was such a com- 
fort to find a woman working really well, without in- 
sisting that hers is the only way of living, and doing 
good without wanting to be thankful for it. She made 
me patient. When you have decided what you do not 
wish to do, you are apt to think anything different 
must be better. You’re not sorry you made the ordi- 
nary career impossible for yourself?” 

“Sorry?” said Rene, puzzled. “It was never a 
thing to be sorry about or glad about. It just hap- 
pened and I felt better. And now I have met you and 
everything is changed again. I didn’t go to my home 
last night.” 

“No?” 

“I went to an old friend of mine who lives happily 
and contentedly. I wanted to see happiness and con- 
tentment. Somehow you had made me sure of my- 
self, and I felt that everything was changed. But the 
change was in myself. In nearly everybody I have 
been more conscious of the things they lack than of 
the things they have. I had been bolstering myself up 

3 r 7 


YOUNG EARNEST 

with contempt — for myself as well as everything else. 
It was that or being sorry for myself. Always a 
struggle. I can’t see it clearly yet : like fighting with- 
out weapons and without a cause. I had no desire to 
live irregularly and uncomfortably or to come in con- 
flict with accepted opinion as to conduct. But I don’t 
see why opinion should be antagonistic to a man’s 
private affairs. I wasn’t antagonistic. I was only 
doing confusedly what I felt very clearly and had 
always felt to be right. I feel certain now that I 
ought to have done so long before. I’d like to explain 
that to all sorts of people, except that honestly I can’t 
take much interest in it. I had a vague sickening feel- 
ing that the end of the world had come, but that was 
only because I could not see an inch before me. 
The end of the world did not come, neither for 
me nor for — her. It seems stupid to be explaining 
all this to you. I know you will not think I am 
excusing myself, because I am sure you accept me as 
I am ” 

“Theoretically,” said Cathleen, looking up at him 
with a quick smile. “You see, I have lived on theory, 
not my own, either; Lotta’s. And I don’t know 
whether my theory can hold out against your prac- 
tice, any more than my sentimental girlish fictions 
could. You upset them, you know, and you are just 
as disconcerting as ever. Shall you go on with your 
work?” 

“I can’t think of anything else I should like so 
well.” 

“And that girl?” 


318 


HAPPINESS 


“That’s what we have both been thinking about all 
the time.” 

“Yes.” 

Cathleen rose and walked over to the window and 
looked out. She stood then for so long that Rene 
followed her and laid his hand on her shoulder. The 
window gave on to a row of back gardens with a few 
trees, black and bare. Opposite was a lighted window 
through which could be seen four girls sewing — 
stitch, stitch, stitch. 

“I have often watched them,” said Cathleen, “and 
wondered what might be in their lives. Desire? Re- 
ligion ? Love ? What is it makes it possible for them 
to work so mechanically and so happily.” 

“Fun,” said Rene. “They want fun, spiced with the 
risk of having to pay for it.” 

“Is she like that?” 

“She was. But there is something more.” 

“There would be,” said Cathleen. “She couldn’t 
love you without being moved out of herself and the 
habits of her class. That is why I am sorry for her. 
Are you going back to her?” 

“Not yet.” 

“I think you ought to write to her.” 

“I was waiting until I had seen you again, and made 
quite sure ” 

“And you are sure now ?” 

“I feel now that we shall always be together, gaz- 
ing out on the world.” 

“And finding it so wonderful.” 

They were silent then, and in each for other was 

3 T 9 


YOUNG EARNEST 


the same song of life and love, a music passing thought 
and understanding. So they remained for a time that 
was no time, hardly conscious of their bodies whose 
slight contact gave them strength for flight. Easily 
they ranged back in spirit to their youth, and caught up 
its sweetness and melody. 

They were broken in upon by Miss Cleethorpe, a 
pale, gray-haired lady whose eyes smiled kindly amuse- 
ment at their helplessness. Bringing help to the help- 
less and forcing them to help themselves was the whole 
practice of her life. Lovers, dogs, indigent young 
women, were the material in which she worked. 

She was presented to Rene, and gave him a grip of 
the hand that startled him with its vigor. Turning to 
Cathleen, she said : 

“The girls have sent up a deputation to me to say 
you have had a man in your room for the last two 
hours, that it is against the rules, and that it is not 
quite proper. Ten minutes they could have over- 
looked. I said that Mr. Fourmy was a very old 
friend, and that I knew all about it, but they insisted 
that I must come and chaperone you, and here I am. 
Speaks well for my authority, doesn’t it?” 

Rene was so distressed at the thought of the young 
women contemning Cathleen that he was almost 
speechless. He muttered that he must go. 

“You mustn’t go,” said Lotta, “before I have 
thanked you for what you have done for Cathleen. 
She came home last night looking perfectly radiant — 
and look at her now.” (She had turned up the lights.) 

3 2 ° 


HAPPINESS 


Cathleen was standing with her hands lightly clasped 
in front of her, her head thrown back, her lips parted, 
and in her eyes a golden tenderness. She smiled and 
shook her head slowly, and came to her friend and 
kissed her. Lotta put her arms round her and hugged 
her. 

“You two poor sillies,” she said, “what a heavy bur- 
den you have shouldered.” 

Rene grinned : 

“I don’t feel the weight of it,” he said. 

Lotta gazed full at him. He met her eyes, searching 
him. 

“Are you going back to your stables ?” she asked. 

“I want two more days of this.” 

“Would you like to take it down to the country? 
There’s a west wind blowing over my hills, and win- 
ter is coming in.” 

Like children, Rene and Cathleen gazed at each 
other in surprised delight. 


Ill 


THE WEST WIND 

Days, that in spite 

Of darkness, by the light 

Of a clear mind are day all night 

N ORTHWEST of London there are hills, where 
the air is eager and the upper winds are caught 
in woods as they come cloud-bearing from the wild 
sky. Often the winds fling clouds about the hills and 
leave them entangled in the woods. Such a cloud they 
had left on the Saturday morning when Lotta Clee- 
thorpe brought Rene and Cathleen to her retreat, an 
old white cottage on the border of a long common 
brown with dead heather, orange with wet withered 
bracken, olive-green with the gorse and the close- 
cropped grass under the gray mist. Out of this, as 
they drove from the station, loomed trees and hay- 
stacks and houses. A public-house and a church stood 
at the end of the common. Soon they passed a black- 
smith’s shop with the bellows in full blast, the sparks 
flying and the smith’s huge arms and swart face lit 
up by the red glow. There came out the merry clink 
of hammers on the anvil, and then the hiss of the 
red-hot metal plunged into water. 

322 


THE WEST WIND 


Rene said: 

“The beginning of it all.” 

“Of what?” asked Lotta. 

“Modern life.” And he found himself thinking of 
Kurt, who had just added to his laurels the first prize 
in a race to Berlin. 

They reached Lotta’s cottage. Apple-trees stood 
by the gate, a clipped box-tree by the door. A sheep- 
dog came bounding along the road, cleared the gate, 
and pawed frantically at Lotta until she crouched and 
he could lay his forelegs on her shoulders and lick her 
face in a frenzied greeting. 

“He lives at the public-house when I am not here, 
but he refuses to regard it as anything but lodgings. 
Down, Sammy! You know Cathleen. Say How do 
to Mr. Fourmy.” 

Sammy cocked his head, looked the other way, and 
lifted his paw. Rene shook it. The dog returned to 
his mistress, who said : 

“I can’t keep my hands off the garden. It has got 
into such a dreadful state. You two had better go for 
a walk. You’ll find toadstools in the woods and there 
may be a few blackberries left.” 

She gave them a basket and sent them forth. 

When they came to the woods, Rene said: 

“It wants only the river and I could believe that we 
had never lost each other for a single day. There were 
just such mists then: the same drip in the trees, the 
same mysterious shrouding of the life of the woods.” 

They wandered for miles, happy, hardly conscious 
of each other in the joy they shared. The mist clung 
323 


YOUNG EARNEST 


about their hair, their eyebrows, and whipped up the 
, color in their cheeks and made their eyes to shine. 
Each new path they came to was a promise of adven- 
ture, and always in color and mystery and the play of 
light the woods fulfilled that promise. Rene jumped 
all the stiles and teased Cathleen because she was 
only a woman and could not do the same, and she 
pointed out that men needed to do extravagant things 
like jumping stiles or they became flabby,' whereas 
women had a more instinctive economy and were 
physically more subtle. 

“Women/’ said Rene, “are ridiculous.” 

“From a man’s point of view. No more ridiculous 
than a man from a woman’s point of view. The ab- 
surdity disappears when they love each other. Then 
male extravagance and feminine subtlety are only in- 
cidentals ” 

“Wise young woman.” 

“I’m a fraud really, Rene. It’s pure Lotta. She 
was trained as a doctor, you know, and really has 
watched people. I only guess.” 

“That’s my trouble, too. I only feel quite sure when 
I reach a certain stage of emotion.” 

“I never feel quite sure. Nor does Lotta. How can 
anyone? She says she has observed certain things. 
She says men and women only make love to each other 
as a rule because they love each other so little that they 
have nothing else in common.” 

“And you and I ?” 

“Have everything.” 

Rene laughed. 


3 2 4 


THE WEST WIND 


“Except the power to jump stiles.” 

“Oh! I love to seg you do it.” 

“And I love to see your inability.” 

“We both get over it. That is all that matters.” 

“That’s a hard, common-sensible woman.” 

They reached a place where the trees — beech, pine, 
and larch — came marching up a steep hill, so steep that 
they could see over the tops of the trees out to the plain 
beneath. The mists wreathed and broke. A pale blue 
sky shone through them, and the sun cast pale yellow 
lights. Cathleen began to sing as they plunged down 
the hill. Rene started to run, could not stop himself, 
and went tearing down, shouting like mad until he 
was brought up by a wide ditch. There he turned and 
watched Cathleen threading her way through the trees, 
singing. The wind came roaring, whispering and mut- 
tering through the leaves, and the trees swayed and 
moaned. Cathleen came running the last few yards, 
and he caught her. She held up her laughing face and 
they kissed, and the wind seemed to sweep through 
them and set them swaying like the trees. Their blood 
raced in their glee. 

On the way back they gathered blackberries, and in 
a green clearing in the woods they found mushrooms. 
Happy they were to take such treasure back to Lotta, 
their friend, who had made such wonders possible for 
them. 

She had supper ready for them, the lamp and the fire 
lit, the curtains drawn in the cozy kitchen. After they 
had eaten, they sat with cigarettes and coffee and pep- 
permints round the fire. 


325 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Lotta said : 

“I knew you would find what you wanted here. I 
think all lovers should bring their love to the earth and 
let the wind know that it is there. How can you love 
in streets and houses? They drive the sweetness out 
of it and keep it unnaturally excited. I have seen so 
much of that. Women especially are so house-con- 
scious. They hate everything in love which threatens 
their pride of possession and position. They live 
so jealously that they want jealousy even in their 
love—” 

'Thank you,” said Rene. 

"For what?” 

"For being so frank. I never was in a house before 
where there was no oppression in the atmosphere.” 

"The house is so much happier since I came to it. 
It was occupied before by an old woman who never 
set foot outside the door for thirty years. We talk 
abusively about life in London, but life in villages is 
even more sordid. Country people live even more 
meanly and graspingly than townsfolk. There is more 
stagnation. They are all inbred. The people here are 
all married to cousins, and they are queer in the head 
and abnormal. Personally, I think the great towns 
grew out of the necessity for breaking all that up. 
English life was far too like a novel by Emily Bronte. 
It had to be broken up and readjusted. It was much 
more that than the desire for money. You are both 
such children that you have hardly had time to realize 
the kind of life in which you were brought up. You 
have both shaken free of it with the violence that 
326 


THE WEST WIND 


makes one so hopeful of the younger generation- 
When you are as old as I am, you will be able to real- 
ize far more than I have done. The readjustment 
will be more nearly completed. The reaction from 
the evils of industrial life will be even more violent 
than the reaction from those of agrarian life. You 
will know how rare love is, and you will rejoice that 
it was given to you to feel it, even though, as it must 
not, it were to end to-night.” She turned to Rene 
and smiled at him with her soft eyes. “Cathleen has 
told me.” 

“Yes,” he said. “I seem to have floundered 
into being forced to live my own life in my own 
way.” 

“Cathleen too. You can only do it together. Neither 
of you could put up with a mate who desired less and 
regarded every emotion as a bond instead of a liber- 
ation. Love is the release of the spirit or it is not 
love.” 

“And if others are to be unhappy?” 

“That is their affair. You don’t seem to have let 
that worry you much until now.” 

“I never saw things so clearly before. There came 
a crisis, and I just plunged blindly. I have a horror of 
doing that again.” 

“But I don’t think you’ll ever mind making a fool 
of yourself, Rene. You never did,” said Cathleen. 

“Perhaps not, my dear, but I should hate to make a 
fool of you.” 

“Everyone,” said Lotta, “makes mistakes. It isn’t 
everyone who will admit them. Once they are admit- 

3 2 7 


YOUNG EARNEST 


ted they often turn out extremely profitable. Really 
I don’t see that you two need have any but financial 
anxiety, and that is easily surmounted. Marriage? 
Neither of you has a scrap of conventional religion. 
You can’t possibly be worried by scruples. Really the 
marriage laws of this country are in such a mess that 
it has become almost a duty for decent people to trans- 
gress them. They won’t be altered in our time, so 
there is nothing for it but to disregard them. You 
have quite enough real difficulties to face without 
troubling yourselves about artificial ones. A few vir- 
tuous people won’t know you ? What are they to you 
or you to them ?” 

“It all comes back,” said Cathleen, “to that girl.” 

“She took her risks. She knew that. They have 
courage, some of those girls.” 

“Is courage,” asked Rene, “all that is necessary?” 

“I think so. It is only lack of courage that has 
made rules of conduct and religious maxims and pre- 
cepts — crutches and props. We’re all very stupid at 
conduct, but if we live by rule and habit there is no 
hope of our getting any better.” 

“But you have rules for your hostel.” 

“I always allow them to be broken when there is 
anything to be gained by it. I love defiance, but I hate 
slyness. Rules must be broken, they must not be 
evaded. But we are beginning to talk for the sake of 
talking, and Cathleen is nearly asleep. I’m glad you 
have had a good day.” 

“Such a day,” he said, “as I never had. I seem to 
have found that for which I have always been search- 
328 


THE WEST WIND 


ing, and it has made everything valuable, even those 
things that I have most hated.” 

“I hope,” said Lotta, “that you don’t think you have 
arrived at any conclusion. It is impossible to decide 
anything about life. It is possible only to live — some- 
times.” 

They went to bed very early. The wind had risen to 
a gale and screamed in the chimneys and the eaves. 

Hardly had Rene sunk into sleep, the quick easy 
slumber of health and peace, than he was roused by a 
fearful din. Leaping out of bed, he ran to the window 
and opened it. The wind came rushing in upon his 
bare chest and made him gasp for breath. Out on the 
road was a crowd of men armed with rattles, tin cans, 
kettles, baths, which they banged and whirled in the 
air as they marched solemnly up the road to the next 
cottage. There they moved slowly up and down, mak- 
ing a terrible noise and chanting: 


There’s evil enough between wind and water 
Without your tumbling of the farmer’s daughter. 
Do you hear Billy Bows behind the door? 
There’s no honest girl shall be a whore, 

With a billy, billy, billy, 

Billy blow. 


They kept this up for a couple of hours in the wind 
and the rain, until at last with three groans and hoots 
they broke up and trailed off into the darkness. 

Rene asked Lotta next morning what they might be 
doing, and she told him that the man in the cottage 
329 


YOUNG EARNEST 


was an unpopular character who had been annoying 
and molesting a girl in the village. 

“That is public opinion. They wouldn’t have 
minded if he had been a popular man, or a rich man. 
They would have blamed the girl in that case.” 

Lotta was staying on for a day or two. Rene took 
Cathleen back to London. He told her he was going 
to his work and Mitcham Mews and Ann. 

“You heard what Lotta said?” 

“About the noise last night and the girl?” 

“Yes. I think it’s true. Ann will be blamed by her 
own class.” 

“Would you like me to go and see her?” 

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you that when I have got 
things straight with her — if I ever do.” 

“I can wait, Rene,” she said. “Time doesn’t seem 
to matter now. Isn’t Lotta splendid?” 

“Splendid!” 

They shook hands as they parted, and each prom- 
ised to write. 


IV 


EXPLANATION 

Mais, helas! quelle raison 
Te fait quitter la maison? . . . 

Et qu’est-ce que je puis faire 
Que je ne fasse pour toi? 

TOURING the three days of Rene’s absence Ann 
' did not speak to a soul. She found the comfort 
of mortification in reading the attorney’s letter from 
Edinburgh. It made her feel hardly used, and that 
was pleasant. Rene had crept into her life under pre- 
text of being at an end of his resources when he was 
incredibly rich. It was not fair: it was abominable. 
The grievance became such an obsession as to ob- 
scure her real dread and anxiety. In her almost 
crazy desire to defend herself against the alien power 
that was coming to him she tore up the letter and 
burned it. He would not know. She would keep 
him. She would get him to take her away. It was a 
good idea of Casey’s. They would all go down into 
the country. Casey said there were cinemas in the 
country. Through the whole of the last night she 
sat brooding in the darkness. Every now and then 
she would pretend that he was there in the next room, 
33i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


in the bed, and she would cling to this pretense until 
she had deceived herself and could almost believe that 
she heard him there. Yes. He was stirring in his 
sleep as he often did. She would go into the room 
and run her hand over the pillows. And her disap- 
pointment was a relief. It would have been terrible 
to have found him there when she knew he was away. 
Where was he? Whom was he with? Why didn’t 
that beast Kilner know, since it was all that beast’s 
doing, that sly hulk with his sarcastic way of speak- 
ing and his eyes that looked at you as if you were 
some sort of animal. It must be Kilner who had got 
him away. She brooded herself into hatred. 

In the morning she watched the painter go out, and 
spat after him. Then she took a knife, went up to his 
room, found the picture on which he was working, 
and slashed it to ribbons. 

“Naked women!” she cried as she cut away at the 
canvas. “Naked women! That’ll teach the filthy 
brute.” 

It chanced that she was out when Rene returned, 
and he went up to Kilner’s room in the hope of finding 
him. He saw the havoc that had been wrought, and 
understood who had done it. When the painter re- 
turned Rene was still trying to piece the canvas to- 
gether. Without a word Kilner took it in his hands, 
and sat fingering it. He said: 

“What luck! What infernal luck! I thought it 
was going to put me on my feet. One of the Pro- 
fessors had been down to see it and was excited about 


332 


EXPLANATION 


it. He thought he could get it sold for me. There’s 
months of work in it.’’ 

“I shouldn’t have thought ” 

“I told you she hated me. I didn’t think she’d be 
clever enough to know how to get back at me. Oh ! 
they are clever, these women, in their own mean little 
way. Drudges, they are, and drabs. It’s men like 
you, Fourmy, keep them so, asking them for love and 
taking the much they choose to give you, and when 
you sicken of it they take their revenge where they 
can.” 

“I never thought ” 

“No. Damn you! You never do think. By God, 
I’d rather be the sort of fool to whom a woman is only 
a meal or a dinner. There’s less mischief in that. 
What’s the good of your emotions if you can’t control 
them? You’d much better give it up like the rest of 
the world, shut yourself up in marriage to keep your- 
self out of harm’s way. Who the devil are you, that 
you should claim in life the freedom an artist hopes 
to get in his art?” 

There was enough truth in Kilner’s denunciation to 
enrage Rene. He had felt so clear and confident, so 
sure of mastering the event of his evil, and all this 
bitterness had him once more throbbing and con- 
fused. 

“What,” he cried, “what does a work of art more 
or less matter? You can’t expect the rest of us to live 
in filthiness so that you may paint pictures of a beauty 
that is never seen.” 

To have stung Rene into a hot fury seemed to 

333 


YOUNG EARNEST 


appease the artist somewhat. He grunted and said: 

“In a way you’re right, and honestly I don’t care a 
hang about the picture. I can paint it again and better. 
But I thought I was going to make some money with 
it, enough to get out of this forever, and it is almost 
more than I can bear to know that the harm has come 
through you. It doesn’t matter. I’ll paint it again. 
I’ll get the fierce little spark of intelligence burning 
in Eve. I’d left that out. I’ll paint her feeling half 
confident of her superiority to both God and Adam, 
and ashamed of having to submit to their fatuous pre- 
tense of creation, their old theatrical trick. Art and 
religion! They stink of the harem and aphrodisiacs, 
the abominable East, the gods of lust and self -mor- 
tification. What has your trumpery idealism to say 
to that?” 

He flung the tattered remains of the picture on the 
fire and held it down. The flames consumed the paint 
greedily and roared in the chimney. 

“So much for that,” said Kilner. “Finished! I’ll 
start again to-morrow. Let’s go and see your little 
vixen and annoy her by showing that she hasn’t hurt 
us in the least.” 

“That’s vindictive.” 

“Ho! Have you turned Christian?” 

“I’m not going to have Ann moithered.” 

“And why not? She must learn her lesson.” 

“Let me find out why she did it first.” 

“I know why she did it. Because she thought I 
had taken you away from her.” 

“She can’t have been jealous of you.” 

334 


EXPLANATION 


“Women are always jealous of a man’s men friends. 
They know his feeling can be just as strong for them 
without being weakened by sex. And they hate that — 
Now, a feeling fortified by sex — ah! but that doesn’t 
happen.” 

“That,” said Rene, “is exactly what has happened.” 

“Eh? To you?” 

Rene nodded, and he told Kilner something of the 
walk in the west wind, the meeting with Cathleen, the 
deliverance it had brought to both of them. 

“Does she know? Ann, I mean.” 

“No. I haven’t seen her.” 

“She must have felt it. Poor little devil! No, 
I’ll not see her. It’s between you two — my rotten 
picture, Ann’s rotten little dream of happiness, both 
destroyed. You look like a destroyer, my friend. It’s 
in your eyes, your gestures, and movements. Absolute 
purpose, absolute desire. There’s nothing else worth 
having.” 

“How absurd you are, Kilner. You turn every- 
thing into a picture as soon as you are interested in 
it at all. Purpose ! I feel like a little schoolboy who 
has to interview his headmaster. I felt just the same 
once when I had been amusing myself with throwing 
paper out of the window. The headmaster saw it, but 
not the culprit. Then I was away from school ill, 
and the whole form got into trouble because no one 
would own up.” 

Kilner shouted with laughter: 

“What a picture of the young Fourmy. Doing 
just what he wanted to do and evading the conse- 

335 


YOUNG EARNEST 


quences by luck. I bet it had all blown over by the 
time you got back.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Rene, “but I confessed, and no one 
was very annoyed.” 

He went round to Ann’s room with a sinking at 
his heart. She must be told, she must be made to 
understand, and she never would. He felt immeasur- 
ably older than she, responsible for her, and rather 
helpless. She was out. He gazed round at the room 
and was touched by its poverty and thriftlessness, the 
cheap little ornaments on the mantelshelf, the souve- 
nirs of Margate and Southend, the cigarette cards 
pinned to the wall, to make, with a mirror, its only 
ornaments. Here they had sat, so many evenings, he 
and she, in a kind of playing at happiness. Here they 
had quarreled. Between quarreling and laughing they 
had spent all their days, laughing into quarrels, quar- 
reling into tears, and out of them again laughing: 
the happy life of the poor, the workers, the thought- 
less, whom no care could subdue, no joy uplift. What 
a relief that life had been to him when he had ’turned 
from that other life, where all his qualities were ex- 
ploited and thought and power of expression were 
used only to sneak advantages, and even love and 
wedded happiness were valued only as possessions! 
How it had stripped him of all arrogance and cupidity 
of mind! The simple innocence of those who sell 
themselves for bread, and know nothing of the busi- 
ness for which they are used, and more despise than 
envy the shows in the production of which more than 
half their efforts are expended. Ann’s scorn of 

336 


EXPLANATION 


“ladies,” believing them all to be light women, her 
hatred of charity organization inspectors (she had 
routed them more than once when they meddled with 
Rita), Insurance Cards, and Old Age Pensions. She 
resented being underpaid, but even more she loathed 
the spirit which tried to supplement the underpayment 
with instruction in virtue made impossible by it, with 
doles and callous assistance. It had not escaped her 
that the motor-cars in the mews cost more to maintain 
than the income of any one of the families who lived 
above them. But she loved her little bare rooms, and 
if she were allowed to keep them and the happiness 
that filled them she asked no more. The brave inde- 
pendence : that was what Rene had prized in her, what 
was expressed in her room. He had contributed noth- 
ing to it but a little comfort, an easy chair, a few 
books, and his pleasure in her. He knew that she 
treasured that above everything in the world, and he 
must take it from her. He was shaken with cowardice 
and dread and pity — by pity most of all. That bound 
him to her, dragged him down. He had not expected 
it, so clear had everything seemed in the light of his 
healthful experience. And, he knew, pity from him 
would be to her of all things the most hateful. He 
could not shake free of it, and it absorbed him. 

He heard her footsteps on the short flight of stairs. 
He was filled with a longing to escape. With her hand 
on the door he lost his head and fled into the inner 
room. He heard her go to the fireplace and sit in the 
easy-chair. She sat silently brooding. Then she heard 
him in the inner room. She had heard that before, 

337 


.YOUNG EARNEST 


and he was never there. Slowly she came into the 
inner room, and he could just see her smoothing the 
pillows with her hands. She caught the sound of 
his breathing and stood stock-still. He could not 
move. She came toward him groping with her hands. 
She touched him. 

“Renny, dear.” 

She was pressed close to him. Her arms went round 
his neck. 

“I knew you’d come back.” 

He caressed her soothingly, gently, consumed and 
burning in his pity for her, and his terror lest she 
should discover it too suddenly. 

He tried to draw her into the outer room, but she 
clung to him and kept him in the darkness, forcing 
him to feel her animal possession of him and hunger 
for him. Rage and the desire for self-preservation 
thrust back his pity and he carried her back to the 
outer room. 

Then it was some moments before she could recover 
herself. She stood giggling and laughing nervously, 
almost hysterically. 

"Renny, dear,” she said, "you did say once we’d 
go off together. I want to. I want to. I’m sorry I 
went on working. I oughtn’t to have done that. We 
ought to have had a house and me looking after 
it.” 

"You would have been even more unhappy.” 

"I’m not unhappy, Renny, dear. You’ve come back. 
And there’s that coming ” 

("She must be kept off that,” he thought.) 

338 


EXPLANATION 


“Old Martin’s been that kind,” she said. “He says 
he’ll see us through if it’s money.” 

“I can make enough money,” he replied, and then 
stopped, puzzled and startled by the malicious pleas- 
ure that came into her eyes. He leaned forward the 
better to see her, for the gas jet was flickering, and 
she turned away with a half smile that was exas- 
peratingly silly. 

“It isn’t money,” he said, “and you know it. I’ve 
seen Kilner.” 

She was instantly defiant on that. 

“Well, and what had he to say for himself?” 

“Nothing you would understand.” 

“Heuh ! Clever, aren’t you, you two, when you get 
your heads together.” 

She began to lay supper. “I’m hungry,” she said. 
“I’ve not felt like eating while you’ve been away. 
Where you been?” 

“Away,” he answered. “Out of London.” 

‘To your home?” 

“No.” 

“I thought you’d have gone to your home.” 

“There’s nothing to take me there. I’ve been with 
friends.” 

“Women?” 

“Yes.” 

She had nothing to say to that. He went on : 

“One of them I knew years ago, when I was a 
boy.” 

“That’s not so long ago. A lady?” 

“Yes.” 


339 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“A lady wouldn’t take up with you now.” 

“She works for her living.” 

“The same as me ?” 

“The same as you.” 

“Well. What of it?” 

“We went down into the country, she and I and her 
friend.” 

“I don’t want to know about that.” 

“But I want to tell you.” 

She stood by the table and her fingers drew patterns 
on the cloth. 

“What is it you want to tell me?” 

“I’m in love with her.” 

Ann’s lips set in a hard line, and her eyes narrowed 
and her brows scowled. 

“Did you come back to tell me that?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why? Did you think I’d want to know?” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“Sorry, you devil? You came down to torment 
me. You’d better go, d’ye hear.” 

Rene could not move. He was fascinated by the 
suffering in the little creature, melted and weakened 
by his pity for her. 

“You’d better go,” she repeated. “And tell her 
you left a poor girl hating you, and see how she’ll like 
that. Sorry! That’s what you say when you step 
on a fellow’s foot in a bus. Sorry! When you got a 
girl body and soul, and you throw her away like dirt.” 

“I came back.” 

“Yes. To tell me that. To tell me I was dirt, to 
340 


\ 


EXPLANATION 

throw me down for her to walk on so’s she shan’t get 
her feet wet.” 

She changed- her tone and asked quietly : 

“You knew her before me?” 

“Long years before.” 

“Before that other one as you married?” 

“Before that.” 

“And she’s pretty and has pretty things?” 

“I’ve told her about you.” 

“Oh! and she sent you back! Thank you for 
nothing.” 

“She did not. I came of my own accord. I couldn’t 
leave you like that.” 

“I’d rather you did. I’d rather you did. My Christ ! 
I can’t bear to see you sitting there and talking and 
talking ” 

He rose to his feet: “I can’t leave you, Ann. I 
couldn’t leave you like you are. . . .” 

She leaned across the table and put out her hand. 
“Look here, Renny. D’you love me?” 

“Yes.” 

“Heh!” She gave a snarl of incredulity. “Heh! 
See here! D’you want me!” 

Her eyes were staring at him cunningly, invitingly. 
He saw that she half believed his weakness would lead 
him to evasion or consent to her will. He waited, and 
made her repeat her question. 

“D’you want me?” 

“I want your happiness,” he said. “I don’t believe 
you will find it in me.” 

She was inarticulate. Her eyes closed and she 

34i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


swayed. She jerked her head toward the door. He 
took that for a sign that he was to go, and moved 
round the table. She was before him, crouching, bar- 
ring the way. Strangled sobbing sounds came from 
her throat. He stretched out his hands to implore 
her, to tell her of his almost intolerable pity. She 
sprang at him. She had a knife in her hand. He 
saw it flash, felt a burning pain in his breast, and 
fell. He could see her face twisted in an agony of 
fear close to his. Spittle from her lips fell upon his 
cheek. Her hands were busy at his breast. He lost 
consciousness. 


V 


THRIGSBY 

Nothing I’ll bear from thee 
But nakedness, thou detestable town! 

T HAT was an appalling night. Rene lay with his 
wound roughly staunched. Ann crouched in the 
darkness by the bedside, fondling his hand, clinging to 
him, occasionally weeping. Both watched the light 
come creeping over the roofs and chimneys. Neither 
could say a word. Their eyes met, and hers were fixed 
hungrily on his face like a dog’s that has been whipped 
for fighting. She looked so scared that he desired 
only to reassure her. 

“Ann,” he said. 

She kissed his hand and fondled it, and pressed it 
to her cheek, and bathed it in her tears and kissed away 
the tears. 

“You’d better fetch Kilner,” he said. “He’ll know 
what to do.” 

“Don’t let him know how it happened. Don’t let 
him know I did it.” 

“No. Go and fetch him.” 

“Oh ! I thought you was dead. I thought you was 
343 


YOUNG EARNEST 


dead. Oh! Renny, dear, what should I ha’ done if 
you’d been dead, my dear?” 

“Go and fetch Kilner. He’ll tell us what to do.” 

She brought Kilner and left them together. Rene 
made a clumsy attempt to shield Ann in a very inco- 
herent account of the affair. Kilner saw through it 
but acquiesced in the intention. 

“Can you move?” he asked. 

“I think so.” 

“Can you walk to a doctor’s? There’s one just 
round the corner. Better than having him here. Some 
doctors talk. You’ll be better out of this.” 

Leaning on Kilner’ s arm, Rene managed to reach 
the doctor’s, but there he fainted. Kilner invented a 
story of an early morning street attack, and the doc- 
tor, who was not interested, swallowed it. He patched 
Rene up, gave him a prescription, and told him to 
call again that day. Rene disliked the man so much 
that he refused inwardly ever to go near him again. 
Between them they had half the fee, and promised to 
send round the rest. 

Kilner made Rene comfortable in his room and was 
then sent off to find Miss Cleethorpe. 

Lotta came at once. She and Kilner liked each 
other. Kilner had begun to see the affair in a hu- 
morous light. Anything to do with Rene was to him 
never very far short of absurdity. 

“I wish I’d thought of it like that before,” he said. 
“I’d never have let him go to her. I might have known 
he would make a mess of it. He was simply bursting 
with exaltation, and when he’s like that it never occurs 


344 


THRIGSBY 


to him that other people may have a different view. I 
half believe he expected Ann to share his enthusiasm 
for the other lady ” 

Lotta could not help laughing, though she protested : 
“What a shame !” 

“I can’t help it,” said Kilner, “other people’s love 
affairs always are comic, and Fourmy — well, he is sim- 
ply inappropriate in a community of creatures who 
live by cunning.” 

“You’ve hit it,” replied Lotta. “I’ve been trying to 
understand what it was made him so exceptional. 

Creatures who live by cunning Thank you, 

Mr. Kilner.” 

“All artists are like that. Cunning is no use in the 
pursuit of art. But they are insulated by their work as 
ordinary people are by convention and habit. No ar- 
tist takes personal relationships seriously. They hap- 
pen. He handles them well or makes a mess of them. 
It does not greatly matter. The ordinary being cannot 
appreciate any personal relationship until it is con- 
ventionalized and stripped of its vigor and value. 
Well — you have seen your Fourmy in action.” 

“And well worth seeing too.” 

Kilner told her what he could make of the new 
disaster, and how Ann had hated him and destroyed 
his work. 

“I imagine,” he said, “that the same blind instinct 
operated against Fourmy. He’s creative also in a 
way. My pictures, his life, his precious romantic life, 
are both things slowly shaped out of chaos, and the 
creative process in a man is absolutely indifferent to 

345 


YOUNG EARNEST 

the stupid security most women value. Ann did her 
ridiculous little best to stop it in both of us.” 

“Poor girl,” said Lotta, “I can imagine the two 
of you driving her distracted. After all, what she was 
going through was important to her.” 

“But only to her. She wanted it to be important for 
him. It couldn’t be: it was quite meaningless.” 

“Nature is cruelly indifferent.” 

“If she weren’t,” said Kilner, “we should never have 
developed intelligence, let alone imagination.” 

“What are we to do with them?” 

“I’ll look after Fourmy if you’ll take charge of Ann. 
Only, remember, you are not supposed to know that 
she did it, and, please, I have told you nothing about 
my picture.” 

The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a 
full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta’s 
kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was 
too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged her- 
self off to her work in order to fill in the creeping 
hours. 

Lotta said she was a friend of Rene’s, and wished 
to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. 
Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to 
side, and cried: 

“Oh ! I wish I was dead, I do. I nearly did myself 
in last night when he lay there in the dark not saying 
a word. I wish I had — I wish I had. I never been so 
miserable. . . .” 

Lotta comforted her as best she could, clumsily 

346 


THRIGSBY 


dropping a word in here and there as Ann poured out 
her confused narrative. 

Ann kept on saying: 

“He ought to have gone if he wanted to go.” 

“But he couldn’t leave you like that ” 

“It was seeing him again done it. I couldn’t bear it, 
seeing him and knowing he was wanting to go.” 

“He was wanting you to feel that — that he was not 
going out of indifference to you.” 

“He doesn’t want me. He said that.” 

“My dear child, you mustn’t think about it like that. 
You must see that it is ended now.” 

“I’ll never care for anybody again — not like that.” 

“Don’t make things harder for yourself. How do 
you know?” 

“You’re only young once.” 

“Love is stronger when youth is gone.” 

Ann believed that. She wanted to believe in Lotta, 
and she sat very quietly, almost like a child, while the 
quiet, gentle woman tried to explain to her that Rene 
had taken nothing away, that their love must die for 
all it had lacked, that there was no disgrace in a failure 
to bring a love to life, that it was happening every- 
where, every day, and that a dead love was the most 
horrible of prisons. And, said Lotta, if a child was to 
be born, it were better not to bring it into such cap- 
tivity, better not to have the joy and beauty of mother- 
hood spoiled by jealousy and disappointment in the 
failure of love. Ann wept anew. People were so 
kind, she said : there was Old Martin, and now there 
was Lotta ; and she had only dreaded her loneliness of 

347 


YOUNG EARNEST 


being left alone to face “that.” Lotta said there was 
no question of being left alone. If Ann liked, she 
could come to her hostel as maid, and when her time 
came she could go out to the country. 

“I think,” said Lotta, “that all children ought to be 
born and bred in the country. Don’t you?” 

“The mews,” replied Ann, “is not much of a place 
for them.” 

She did not quite like the idea of being “in service,” 
but Lotta explained that it did not necessarily mean for 
always. Once the baby was born and provided for, 
Ann could go back to her factory and take up her life, 
if she wished, where it was before Rene came into it. 

“But I’ll always want to hear about him,” said Ann. 

“Of course. He’ll always want to hear about you.” 

“And see him.” 

“He’ll want to see you too.” 

So it was arranged, and Ann promised to be at the 
hostel next morning. 

When Lotta had gone, she sat down and wrote : 

“Dear Renny, — I do want you to forgive me. I have 
been awful, but not without excuse. I do like Miss Lotta. 
She’s been an angel to me and made me feel awfuller. I’m 
going to her. A letter for you to say you ’ad come into 
some money. I tore it up when I first began to feel bad 
toward you. I don’t feel bad any more. — Your loving 
Ann.” 

This confession reached Rene at the same time as 
a letter from his brother George conveying the same 

348 


THRIGSBY 


news. The attorney in Edinburgh had written to say 
he had no reply from Mr. Rene Fourmy, and to ask 
for information as to his whereabouts. “This,” said 
George, “has been a bit of a shock to us. We’d counted 
on something from the old lady. However, it makes 
a difference to you. If you feel inclined to come up 
and see us I’ll be glad to have you. I suppose you’ll 
give up the street-slogging. The old man has been 
in London. Did you see him?” 

Rene announced his intention of going to Thrigsby. 
His mind was going back and back over his life in the 
attempt to understand it. If he could see George and 
his mother, he felt and hoped that he might be able to 
follow up the threads placed in his hands by his chance 
encounter with his father. 

A day or two later saw him arriving at the Albert 
Station with his arm in a sling. George was there to 
meet him. 

“Hullo, old sport,” he said, “been in the wars?” 

Rene told the lie invented by Kilner for the doctor. 

“By Jove,” said George, “you have been roughing 
it. I’ll tell that to the youngsters in our office when 
they get dotty about Canada and the Wild West. Wild 
West of London, eh?” and he chuckled at his own 
joke. 

“Elsie’s quite excited,” he said, as they boarded 
the Hog Lane tram. 

“And mother?” asked Rene. 

“Well. Hum. You’ll find a difference in the 
mother.” 


349 


YOUNG EARNEST 


Rene was struck by many changes. New ware- 
houses, new rows of shops, some attempt to bring dis- 
tinction into the architecture of the city, though, for 
the most part, nothing but ostentation was attained. 
They passed the university. There were new build- 
ings there, more like an insurance office than ever. 
Streets that he remembered as respectable and pros- 
perous had become slums swarming with grimy chil- 
dren. A great piece had been taken out of Potter’s 
Park for the building of a hideous art gallery. The 
trams now passed down Hog Lane West, with the 
result that most of the houses had apartment cards 
in their fanlights. George had moved from The Nest 
into 168. He could get a larger house for the same 
rent. His house was exactly the same as their old 
home. It gave Rene a depressing idea that nothing had 
changed. George was fatter : Elsie thinner. They had 
four children. 

George was in the same office, and, as he said, had 
flung away ambition : too many children to take risks, 
and after all there was nothing in the small firm now. 
The one or two connections you depended on might go 
bust any day. It needed enormous capital to stand 
the fluctuations of prices. He had got a rise by pre- 
tending to go and was quite content. He played bowls 
in the summer and bridge in the winter. And Elsie? 
What with the house and the mother she had plenty 
to do, plenty to do. 

As Rene walked along the passage he felt uncannily 
certain that he would find his mother sitting by the 
fireplace knitting. And it was so. She raised her 
350 


THRIGSBY 


eyes and looked at him with timid anxiety, held out 
her cheek to be kissed, went on knitting, and said : 

“Now sit down and give an account of yourself.” 

He edited his experiences, and she listened without 
interest. Most of his talk was of Kilner. 

“Artists are very immoral men, aren’t they?” 

Rene shrugged. 

“It depends,” he said, “on what you mean by moral- 
ity.” 

“There are rules,” said she, “and commandments.” 

“My friend has rules,” he replied, “rather good ones. 
He dislikes doing anything which interferes with his 
power to paint.” 

“To me that sounds very selfish.” 

“I don’t think we can argue about that, mother.” 

“No. I suppose you made very little money.” 

“Three pounds a week.” 

“I suppose you could do with that, with only your- 
self to keep. Though it seems a pity, considering the 
amount of time and money spent on your education.” 

Was it his mother speaking? What had happened 
to her? Whence had come the dry hardness in her 
voice? Why were her eyes so dead? They used to 
steal quick little glances when she spoke. Now she 
only stared listlessly. A home-coming? This for a 
home? In the house next door there had been some 
stirring of life: the night when he had returned home 
from Scotland: the strange days after his father’s 
restoration. 

The windows of the room were shut. Rene felt 
stifled. He made some excuse and went away out of 
35i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


the house, and roamed through the familiar streets. 
There were many houses empty : the gardens, some of 
which had once been trim, were now unkempt. The 
whole district was dismal and devitalized. Only the 
red trams clanging and clanking down the cobbled 
streets made any stir and gaiety. 

He found himself presently in Galt’s Park. The lit- 
tle pink brick houses had invaded it. Many of the big 
houses were pulled down: others were being demol- 
ished, and only jagged walls and gaping windows were 
left. On the site of the Brocks’ house stood a little 
red-brick chapel outside which were announcements 
in Welsh and English. That gave him a shock. Some 
of the past life had been brushed away. He disliked 
the idea of its room being usurped by a chapel, a place 
of Christian worship. He did not know why he dis- 
liked this idea so much, but it was connected vaguely 
with the image of his mother sitting in that room, 
knitting and talking in an empty voice, and clinging 
obstinately to rules of conduct. 

At the other end of Galt’s Park he came on a new 
street, flung straight across what he remembered as 
fields. Following its dreary length, he found himself 
near the Smallmans’ house. It was now completely 
shut in with little pink brick houses. He turned in at 
the gate, rang at the bell and asked the maid if he could 
see the Professor. He was left waiting in the hall 
where he had seen Linda’s green parasol. Here, too, 
there was no change. The Professor came out looking 
very mysterious. He took a hat down, seized Rene 
by the arm and led him out into the street. 

352 


THRIGSBY 


“Well, well,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, glad 
to see you. How are you?” 

“Very well.” Rene felt inclined to laugh. Clearly 
the Professor was trying not to hurt his feelings and 
to disguise the fact that he did not think him fit to 
enter his house, that temple of domesticity. 

“Tell me about yourself. One doesn’t lose interest, 
you know.” 

This time Rene did not edit his experiences. 

“I had heard stories,” said the Professor. “I was 
reluctant to believe them.” 

“Why?” 

“Well — er — You know — one expects — — ” 

“That every man will do his duty.” 

“It is hardly a subject for satire,” said the Pro- 
fessor. 

Rene exploded: 

“Good God! What else is it a subject for? Eng- 
land expects? Does the whole duty of man consist in 
self-mutilation? Why, then, the noblest man is he 
who shirks every responsibility, let his mind rot and 
his feelings wither, so that he can attain a devilish 
efficiency at the job into which he tumbles before he 
has begun to develop enough to know what he can 
do. These are your successful men, your pundits, your 
Lord Mayors, your merchant princes, your politi- 
cians ” 

“My dear Fourmy, I think you should recollect that 
you hardly gave yourself time to recognize what 
Thrigsby stands for, the greatest industrial center in 
the world.” 


353 


YOUNG EARNEST 


‘‘I had time enough to realize what it has done for 
my father, my mother, my brother, and myself.” 

“Two wrongs do not make a right, and I do not 
think you set about remedying matters in the right 
way. You had every opportunity here. You had 
escaped the pressure of industrialism. You had good 
brains.” 

“Brains!” cried Rene. “I had escaped from in- 
dustrialism only to talk about it.” 

“We are doing useful work. The defects of the 
system are slowly being recognized as a result of our 
investigations.” 

“Can’t you realize them without investigation ? 
Aren’t they as plain as the nose on your face?” 

“You can’t find a remedy without investigation. 
That leads to mere sentimental socialism. But why 
need we quarrel about that? You didn’t like the 
work. I hope you found more satisfaction in your 
vagabondage.” 

“London is just as bad, rather worse, because the 
wickedness of it all is glossed over with a kind of 
boastfulness. Here you either make money or you 
don’t. There, as far as I can see, your only chance 
is to spend money: not that I saw much of that ex- 
cept from the outside ; still I did see all sorts and kinds 
of people, and you can make rough conclusions about 
them.” 

“You don’t mind my suggesting that you were 
hardly in a condition to make impartial observations?” 

“We don’t seem able to use the same terms. You 
still think I was a fool not to stay in my nice little 

354 


THRIGSBY 

home, with my nice little job and my nice little in- 
come.” 

“I don’t judge you. I only say that if everybody 
were to do the same ” 

“I only wish more people would. There’d soon be 
an end of congestion. I only came round to-night be- 
cause I couldn’t stand the sight of my brother settling 
down to his nice little home and my mother fast freez- 
ing into a nice old lady — and then I find you terrified 
lest I should enter and pollute your nice little home. 
I tell you, what I have seen to-day has settled me. I 
came up here in a, muddle about it all, half feeling 
that I had made an ass of myself, but I’m absolutely 
certain now ” 

“But a man must think of his wife and children, 
and, indeed, you are unjust. I have no fear of your 
disturbing my household. We should be only too glad 
to see you, only it happened, if you must know, that 
my wife was expecting Linda Brock. She uses her 
own name now.” 

Rene gave a shout of laughter. 

“But I’d like to see her. How is she?” 

“Her mother died six months ago and left her a 
great deal of money, a fortune. We had no idea she 
was so rich. Linda wrote some plays, you know. She 
has bought the theater and presented it to the Players. 
I am one of the trustees. Thrigsby is very proud of 
the theater ” 

“It used to be music when I was young,” said Rene, 
“and the orchestra was always in debt.” 

“Art,” said the Professor, “cannot be expected to 

355 


YOUNG EARNEST 


pay for itself. We are running the theater to a certain 
extent in connection with the university ” 

He had assumed the voice in which he lectured. 
Rene cut him short: 

“I’d like to see Linda. Will you take me back with 
you.” 

“I— er ” 

“You needn’t thrust me on her. Just ask her if 
she’d like to see me, and come out and tell me : yes or 
no. After all, if it comes to that, we’re still married. 
I believe, by the brutal laws of the country, I could 
insist on seeing her whether she liked it or not. You 
might tell her that I have come into some money 
also.” 

“Really? I’m so glad.” 

“Hurrah!” cried Rene, “you think I’ll have to live 
up to it and settle down.” 

“It would certainly be a splendid thing if ” 

The Professor’s whole attitude toward him was 
changed. Already, it was clear, he was beginning to 
plan a grand scene of reconciliation, a reformed Rene, 
a forgiving Linda, the Smallman family in the back- 
ground, symbolical of Impregnable Matrimony. Rene 
caught the hint and his mind played with it and blew it 
out into a grotesque. It gave him so much pleasure 
that he chuckled and said : 

“It won’t do, you know. We couldn’t come together 
again without a scandal.” 

The Professor was so intent on his own thoughts 
that he did not notice the savage irony of the remark. 
He said : 


356 


THRIGSBY 


“It would soon die down.” 

“Sooner than the other?” 

“Well !” 

“I’ve got you there,” observed Rene. “It wasn’t 
fair though. I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing 
any such thing.” 

“Why, then ?” 

“Why do I want to see her ? I don’t know. I want 
to. Isn’t that reason enough?” 

They had returned to the house. 

“You just ask her. Tell her I’m in Thrigsby for a 
few days and would like to see her. If she doesn’t 
wish it, don’t worry. I’ll wait ten minutes.” 

“Very well,” said the Professor, not altogether giv- 
ing up hope, “I’ll tell her, but the way you talk of it 
seems to me almost indecent.” 

He let himself in at the front door, and in ten min- 
utes was out again. 

“Very well,” he said, “she will see you. ... If you 
don’t mind, my wife has gone up to her room.” 

“I wonder,” thought Rene, “what they would 
make of Ann. They wouldn’t mind my leaving 
her.” 

He felt rather nervous as he reached the threshold 
of the study, but stiffened himself for the plunge. 
The door opened and he found himself shaking Linda 
warmly by the hand and asking after her health, and 
explaining how he came to be in Thrigsby. Linda was 
noticeably plumper, rounder, and more solid. He could 
see no charm in her and thought her unsuitably 
dressed, tactlessly, provincially. On the whole, he 

357 


YOUNG EARNEST 

liked her. The handshake was firm, her eyes were 
frank. 

“It was nice of you to come and see me,” she said. 
“So much better to have no nonsense about it.” 

“If you like,” said the Professor, “I — I — will ” 

Linda appealed to Rene. 

“Oh, no. I’ve nothing to say. I only wanted to 
know that there was to be no nonsense between us. 
I’m very glad. I wish we could have arrived at that 
sooner, but I suppose that was impossible.” 

Linda smiled : 

“You’ve changed, Rene. That would have been 
blasphemy to you a few years ago. You hated coming 
to your senses.” 

“I should think so,” said the Professor. 

“You’re not going to stay in Thrigsby?” asked 
Linda. 

“No. That’s impossible, even if I wanted to. We 
should be crossing each other’s tracks. Not that I 

should mind that, but Well, it wouldn’t do, would 

it ?” 

“No. I prefer being without a husband. Really, 
for an active woman it seems to me to be the ideal 
condition. She has a status and no risk.” 

The Professor sat bolt upright: 

“What do you mean, Linda?” 

“I won’t insist on the advantages if it shocks you, 
Phil. Rene understands me.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Rene, “Linda means she can lose 
her head without any danger of getting married.” 

The Professor exploded: 

358 


THRIGSBY 


“I never heard of anything so — so abominable.” 

“But I did mean that,” said Linda. “Women do 
lose their heads, you know, even when they are mar- 
ried. Ask Freda. Don’t look so hurt. She and I 
were talking it over yesterday, and we agreed that the 
law was so horrid that all I could do was to disre- 
gard it. And if Rene is willing that is what I propose 
doing. You shall represent the world at large. You 
do represent its opinion. You know ” 

“I do not.” 

Linda passed over the interruption: 

“You are the world at large and I say to you : 'This 
man is no longer my husband.’ No more than that 
should be necessary. You don’t want any more than 
that, do you, Rene?” 

“Even that seems to me a needless statement of fact, 
but perhaps I’m extreme.” 

The Professor rose and stood with his back to the 
fireplace : “All this,” he said, “is extremely distaste- 
ful. You are making a mock of marriage.” 

Said Rene : 

“We know more about it than you. We’ve tried 
disruption and you haven’t. We’re both the better for 
it. The fact is, there is no such thing as marriage. 
There are marriages, and precious few of them. 
Yours, no doubt, is one of the few.” 

The Professor was mollified, swallowed the ha- 
rangue he had prepared, and sat down again. 

Rene took Linda to her house in a remote suburb. 
She said: 


359 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“You know I quite dreaded meeting you again. I 
always had a feeling I should. The poor dear Pro- 
fessor was quite disappointed because we didn’t make 
a scene.” 

“Oh, he didn’t mind once we made it quite clear 
that we were casting no shadow of doubt upon the 
sanctity of his own domestic happiness. They’re all 
like that.” 

“I’m sure he’s quite convinced that you have be- 
come very wicked. Have you ?” 

“No. Strict monogamist.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“One wife at a time.” 

Linda laughed at him. “You always were uncom- 
promising.” 

Her laughter grated on Rene. He had a revulsion 
of feeling against her. She was, he realized, and al- 
ways had been, cynical. 

At her gate she held his hand for a long time, and 
asked him if he would not come and see her again. 

“I think not,” he said. 

“I wish you would. We might be such friends. 
And you have become so interesting.” 

“I think not,” he repeated. “Any friendship we 

might have would only be an ” He could not 

find the word and stopped rather foolishly. He could 
not move until he had found it. So they stood there 
hand in hand waiting in a ridiculous and empty si- 
lence. 

“Would be what?” she asked in irritation. 

He found the word. 


360 


THRIGSBY 


“An impertinence.” 

She shook his hand from hers almost angrily and 
walked away. 


He knew then why he had come to Thrigsby. It was 
to make a clean cut with her. That achieved, there 
was nothing more in the grim city of his youth to keep 
him. 


VI 


THE COMFORT OF RELIGION 

Quoi ! Dieu me punirait eternellement de m’etre livre a 
des passions qu’il m’a donnees? 

T HERE might be nothing to keep him, but yet 
he stayed five days longer. For one thing 
George’s children were amusing and a profitable study. 
They had discovered that they had only to lie to their 
parents to keep them quiet, and, as lying was ex- 
pected of them, and made things comfortable, they saw 
no harm in it. For the rest they did as they pleased 
and amused themselves. Little George was the very 
spit of his grandfather and a great spinner of yarns. 
Rene told him one morning to ask his mother if he 
could go out with him. Off trotted the boy, to return 
in a moment with a detailed account of the conversa- 
tion he had had. It transpired subsequently that Elsie 
was out at the time. Rene told her. She said : 

“I don’t know what to do about the child. He has 
such an imagination.” 

“I prefer to call that invention. Imagination is the 
one quality in you that appreciates truth. I should 
begin if I were you by satisfying his curiosity. Tell 
him the truth about anything he wants to know.” 

362 


THE COMFORT OF RELIGION 


“But he wants to know such awful things.” 

“What awful things ?” 

“Well, about me and George.” 

“It’s hard to put a lie straight once you’ve told it. 
It is terribly easy to lose your respect for your 
parents.” 

“Oh, but little George loves us.” 

“How do you know?” 

“He says so nearly every night.” 

“Oh, well,” said Rene, “people believe only what 
they like to believe.” 

Elsie was rather ruffled: 

“After all, they’re our children.” 

“Certainly. You’ll find out what they think of it 
soon enough.” 

It was interesting to watch the processes which went 
to make up the fool’s paradise that George and Elsie, 
in common with their kind, called Home, the worship 
of lip-virtue, the constant practice of mean little sub- 
terfuges, George dodging Elsie’s interest and suspicion 
of himself, she his of her, and the children, where 
necessary, contributing to the comedy and, for the 
rest, living thoroughly, selfishly, and callously in their 
own pursuits. 

Rene found that as long as he would let George talk 
about bridge, bowls, and business, or splutter abuse of 
Radical legislation, and as long as he allowed Elsie to 
chatter of the neighbors and children and music-halls 
and clothes, they were both quite happy. 

With his mother it was otherwise. She was uneasy 
in his presence and they could hardly talk at all, except 

363 


YOUNG EARNEST 


about their relations, the rich Fourmys, and the shabby 
tricks they had done; but after a while Rene became 
aware that they were holding a stealthy converse, an 
undercurrent to the words they used. He tried all 
sorts of devices to bring it to the surface but without 
success. His mother would relapse into silence or, 
without a word, would hurry off to her church and 
return impenetrably encased in humility, pale with 
emotional satiety. There was something abnormal 
about her then, something unnatural that made Rene’s 
flesh creep. When it had passed he would feel once 
more the wildness in her that she kept so savagely re- 
pressed. 

He recognized at last that he was staying on in the 
hope of penetrating her defenses. Having come to 
that, he attacked her one night when George and Elsie 
were out, and he knew there was no service at the 
church for her to escape to. Like the dutiful husband 
he was, George made a practice of taking Elsie to a 
music-hall once a week, a music-hall or two cinemas, 
as she chose. 

Mrs. Fourmy had put down her knitting and said: 

“I think I would like a game of patience, Rene.” 

He put out the table and the cards and they played. 
He said: 

“I wonder how you can stand seeing them play the 
old, old game.” 

“What old game?” 

“Marriage. Killing each other in the first few 
weeks and then — humbug.” 

“George is a very good husband and father.” 

364 


THE COMFORT OF RELIGION 


“He lives with a woman in his house and children 
come automatically/' 

“He is very good to Elsie/' 

“He placates her." 

Mrs. Fourmy took out the ace of diamonds and 
covered it. Rene said : 

“Do you ever think, mother, of how we used to say 
we’d go and live together?” 

“Sometimes. I knew it was just nonsense." 

Her eyes gave him a quick little affectionate glance, 
searching for affection. Ah! that was better. 

“Not such nonsense, either. Why shouldn’t you go 
and live in Aunt Janet’s cottage? It was that I was 
thinking of, though I never thought it would be mine." 

“I’d be so lonely." 

“No lonelier than you are here." 

“No." 

That escaped her involuntarily. She covered it up. 

“You’re too old for that sort of talk, Rene. You’re 
not a boy any longer." 

“I'm much younger than I was then." 

“Yes, that’s true. Would you come too?" 

“No. I — I’m going south again." 

“Have you met — her?" 

“Yes." 

“I thought so." Her hands trembled. “Are you 
— are you going to live with her ?" 

“I hope so." 

“It will be living in sin. I couldn’t live in your 
house if I knew that " 

“You prefer George?” 

365 


YOUNG EARNEST 

“I — I — — Please don’t talk about it any more, 
Rene.” 

“I must. You love me far more than you love 
George, and yet you prefer to accept a home from 
him rather than from me.” 

“Certain things are wrong, Rene.” 

“I take my chance of that.” 

“We aren’t given any choice.” 

“Hell in this world or hell in the next.” 

“Don’t speak lightly of such things, Rene.” 

“I saw my father in London.” 

Mrs. Fourmy let the cards trickle from her hands, 
and sat staring at him with weary, frightened eyes. 

“You are your father over again.” 

“He told me. Then it was your love or your re- 
ligion ” 

“Don’t, Rene, don’t!” 

He could not continue. He watched her living again 
in the agony of the memory, fighting with it, fighting it 
back, stifling the hunger in herself. He rose to leave 
her. She thought he was already gone, and slipped to 
her knees in an attitude of prayer. 

Rene went to his room at the back of the house, 
the exact counterpart of his old den. He cursed that 
jealous God, that brutal invention of cowardice which 
has laid waste the western world. His rage only 
subsided when he came to think of Cathleen. He 
took paper and pen and wrote to her: 

“I seem hardly at all different from the boy who 
used to write to you. It is almost exactly the same 
366 


THE COMFORT OF RELIGION 

room, the same hour, only now it is my brother and 
sister-in-law who occupy the big bed in the big front 
room. The window looks out at the same lighted 
windows opposite. And I am the same except that I 
know myself better and am more sure. What an ex- 
traordinary phantasmagoria between our parting and 
our meeting ! How worthless and external adventures 
can be! How worthless and external the more inti- 
mate relationships! But without adventure, without 
mistakes, folly, suffering, how is that discovery to be 
made? I suppose my brother never could have made 
it, but he must have had, perhaps even now he has, 
his moments when his desire tugs against his little 
round of habits. He would call himself a happy man, 
and perhaps he is so. Perhaps we all get what we 
desire. That would be a comfortable creed, and I 
could believe it were it not for my mother. One is 
not born of a woman for nothing. Something binds. 
There is a deeper knowledge than that of the mind. 
There is in my mother a quality with which I feel at 
home, free. But she withholds it from me. I feel 
she hates it in me, as in herself, as in my father. Hard 
to find anything else in common between them. I told 
you that story of how she surrendered to him when 
he came back. It must have been that in her, taken 
unawares. It had lived without alarm for so long. 
It had been stirred in her when I came back from 
Scotland so full of that idiotic love for you — and after 
that, I can’t follow. Too near to it perhaps, or per- 
haps it is obscured in me by all I have gone through 
since. But now she baffles me. She has suffered. Yes.. 

367 


YOUNG EARNEST 

We all suffer, but suffering leads to discovery, to joy, 
or life is altogether barren. She suffers, she must 
suffer from living here in the dull house, but she takes 
her suffering and bottles it up, sterilizes it with re- 
ligion. Her comfort ! From the bottom of my heart I 
hate it. When she is full of what she calls her re- 
ligion, then I can only bear with her by my inborn 
knowledge of her, and for that only the more do I 
detest the poison that has ruined her splendid life. 
And how it has been exploited, this voluptuous, sel- 
fish pleasure which they dare to call prayer and wor- 
ship, this cowardly refusal to follow suffering wither- 
soever it leads. I cannot be tolerant about it. To 
thousands I know, it is no more than bridge or bowls 
to my brother George, a pastime. But with her, and 
with all who have a capacity for suffering, it is a pas- 
sionate negation, and to have lived at all must be a 
horror. You see, I am almost inarticulate about 
it. I have tried to break through it and failed. She 
saw, and closed her eyes, as she must have seen time 
and again. The delight of seeing almost deliberately 
debased to fear. I wish I were more used to think- 
ing about people, then I could make it more clear. 
But it doesn’t seem much use, for I go on believing 
in them and liking them and expecting all sorts of 
things that never come. Oh, the freedom that I find 
with you, and the thought of you! Everything you 
understand, and all the differences between us we 
can just laugh at and use. I must take you to some 
place where we can build up a healthy life. Now 
that I have money, I thought for a time that we would 
368 


THE COMFORT OF RELIGION 


go and live in Scotland in my house. (How odd that 
looks. I really am pleased with my possessions for the 
first time. ) That would not do. There must be work 
and activity. Well have a brave time making plans 
to keep each other and everybody we know happy and 
keen. No more grubby humbugging, and no more 
Mitcham Mews. We’ll find a way. . . .” 

There came a tap at his door. He went to open it. 
His mother stood there. 

“Aren’t you going to bed, Rene ? George and Elsie 
came home long ago.” 

“I was writing a letter.” 

“You shouldn’t stay up, wasting the gas and all.” 


.VII 


CASEY’S VENTURE 
Fortis imaginatio venerat casum. 

C ATHLEEN replied: 

“I think you are hard on your mother. You 
love her too well to judge her, but you read yourself 
into her. You do that with me too, and I am some- 
times alarmed when I think how I may disappoint 
you. But then I trust you so completely. You give so 
much that what you give turns at once into a gift from 
me to you, and that makes me give too. So it goes 
on like rain and cloud and river. Don’t try to upset 
your little family. They won’t like it. Keep all the 
upsetting for me. I love it and need it constantly.” 

He was very happy with this letter, carried it in his 
pocket and fingered it continually. Under its influence 
he ceased to chafe against his surroundings, and made 
no further attempt to force himself on his mother, 
and in her shy way she seemed to take pleasure in his 
exuberance. 

The Edinburgh attorney sent an advance of £100. 
He posted £20 to Kilner, and besought him to leave 
Mitcham Mews and find a studio or go down into the 
country. Another twenty he sent to Lotta for Ann. 
370 


CASEY’S VENTURE 


He bought his mother an Indian shawl and provided 
Elsie with two dresses, tailor-made. The children 
were taken to a toy shop and allowed to select three 
treasures each. Little George hesitated for a long 
time between a helmet and a whip, and finally chose 
the latter because his small brother was no good as 
a soldier, but quite fair as a horse. 

When Rene announced that he must go, George de- 
clared that they would “make an evening of it,” and 
they played bridge until ten, and then in the parlor 
Mrs. Fourmy drew soft music from the old piano with 
its yellow keys. Under her hand the beauty of the 
Moonlight Sonata seemed faded, and Rene thought 
sadly that it was like the beauty of her life, faded and 
gone to dust. And as she played he took down the 
old family copy of Shakespeare, a vulgar edition 
spoiled with colored portraits of actors and actresses. 
He opened it at random and his eyes fell on these 
words : 

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun 
Nor the furious winter’s rages : 

Thou thy worldly task hast done, 

Home art gone and ta’en thy wages: 

Golden lads and girls all must, 

As chimney sweepers, come to dust. 

And tears came to his eyes, and he was filled with love 
and appreciation for these good kinsfolk of his who 
found such wealth in their little happiness and were 
so easily consoled in their little sorrows. And in the 
music it seemed that he and his mother could meet, 
had found a language which both could understand, 
37i 


YOUNG EARNEST 


a song to unite passionate acceptance and passionate 
denial in the peace of the soul. 

George said he never did think much of classical 
music, and asked Elsie to sing his favorite song: 
“Poppyland.” 

That done, they joined hands and sang “For Auld 
Lang Syne.” 

His mother came to see Rene in his bed. She said : 

“You won’t come again.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“I feel it. You’ve been very good and you have 
made me very happy.” 

“Then I’ll come again.” 

“I don’t want you to come again. You’ll never be 
the same. George is always the same.” 

Rene remembered how his father had said she had 
done her best to keep them from ever being men. 

“All right, mother. I wouldn’t like it to be a pain 
for you to see me.” 

She smiled. 

“It always is pain, Rene, dear, because I had to let 
you go.” 

He drew her down to him and kissed her. She 
said: 

“An old woman like me.” 

He whispered: 

“There’ll always be some music that I can never 
hear without thinking of you.” 

“Yes,” she said. “You were always the one to 
listen. And your father liked it too — some things.” 

“I’ll think of that too.” 


372 


CASEY’S VENTURE 

“Yes. Think kindly of your father. We both did 
try.” 

And she crept away. Rene called after her, but she 
did not hear him. He wished to keep her with him, 
to try to find some word that should comfort her. But 
he knew at once that the word would elude him, that 
there was nothing to say, that he and she were lost to 
each other, and must go their ways. All his efforts, all 
his hopes could wake no response in her. The mention 
of his father made him know how dearly she had 
loved the man, and he began to perceive the subtle 
force of love, how it can live in defiance of the will, 
and even through the failing of desire; how it uses 
even differences, even ruptures to bind and sustain; 
and how even the most selfish souls are knit with 
others, though it be to the destruction of every pleas- 
ant joy. He saw how little love needs consciousness, 
and how desperately men stand in need of it. Else 
are they consumed in love, and never for a moment 
do their lives take form and color before they sink 
to dust again, not wholly created before they are de- 
stroyed. Ideas of Kilner’s came rushing back to 
Rene’s mind, his description of his vision, the slow 
insistence on being given expression and form in paint, 
his own helplessness against the tyranny of what his 
eyes had seen and his imagination mastered. Rene 
began to understand that, to lose sense of time, to 
find in himself also a vision that had possessed him 
always. Only, unlike Kilner, he could not trace it 
back to any moment of ecstasy, any keen appreciation 
of some natural beauty, or the play of light. Light ! 

373 


YOUNG EARNEST 


That was the creating idea. Kilner responded to the 
light of the sun, Rene to the light of the imagination, 
the light of the sun wrought upon by men’s minds, so 
that their life also had its sun to bring fertility, and 
make the body a spirit and love an intellectual thing ; 
the light of the sun stored through all the generations 
to dissipate the terrors of life and the power of death, 
to concentrate upon all beloved objects and show them 
in their loveliness as visions urging to creation. And 
in his love of woman man seeks no reflection of his 
light but the flash of hers, that her beauty may not 
perish. 

Rene in his joy began to sing to himself. It was 
the song Cathleen had sung in the woods. He could 
see her again as she was there in the green haze of 
the woods, in the dappled light, mysterious and wild. 

From that he deliberately turned away to fix his gaze 
on the humorous reality, because there was nothing 
that he did not desire to sweep into his joy. He lit a 
match and gazed round the little, cheaply furnished 
room, the ugly toilet service, the yellow dressing-table, 
the silly patterned wall-paper of pallid roses, the ex- 
ecrable pictures on the wall. His eyes were dazzled 
by the light, and they ached. Came darkness again, 
and he hummed to himself as he thought of the mor- 
row and the train, with its wheels humming along 
the rails, taking him nearer the goal of his desire. 

In the morning George shook him warmly by the 
hand when he came down, again as he was putting on 
his coat, and again, twice, as he set out for business. 

374 


CASEY’S VENTURE 

“Good luck,” he said. “Good luck, old man. Elsie 
really has loved having you, and I’m sorry you’re leav- 
ing dear, old, dirty Thrigsby.” 

“Good-by,” said Rene. “I’ll let you know what 
happens to me, if anything does. I don’t think I shall 
stay in London.” 

“Good-by, then. By George, I shall be late !” And 
he set off at a run. 

Rene only had ten minutes more. Most of that was 
taken up with seeing the children off to the kinder- 
garten they attended. Mrs. Fourmy had stayed in 
her bed. He went up to see her. She clung to him, 
but spoke no word, and he was too deeply moved to 
speak. She looked old and frail and very small in her 
bed. At last she said: 

“You’re glad to go?” 

“Yes.” 

Her eyes looked hunger and reproach. She turned 
her face away. 

“Good-by.” 

“Good-by, mother. George is a good fellow, isn’t 
he?” 

“Oh, yes. And I find the children a great com- 
fort.” She said that in a perfectly toneless voice. The 
contrast between it and what she had looked only a 
moment before shocked Rene. He mastered himself 
and kissed her and hurried away. 

Elsie said: 

“It has been a treat. You really are a sight for sore 
eyes, Rene. I never thought you would grow into 
such a handsome man. I do wish George didn’t 

375 


YOUNG EARNEST 


have to go to that office. It makes him so pasty.” 

“Let me know when you have a birthday,” said 
Rene, “and you shall have another tailor-made.” 

“It’s next week,” said Elsie innocently. 

“Right you are. You shall have it.” 

At last he was in the train. No sleep this time. 
Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, the hills by Elstree, 
London. A taxi took him hot speed to the hostel. 
Cathleen was not yet back from her work. Lotta met 
him with a grave face. She had had a terrible time 
with Ann, who had alternated between a dog-like grati- 
tude to herself and harsh defiance of Cathleen and 
all the other young women of the hostel. The situa- 
tion had been impossible. To appease her she was 
allowed to see his letter, and after a few hours’ brood- 
ing on it — not without tears — she had demanded the 
twenty pounds. With that, apparently, she had cabled 
to Joe and Rita and another friend in Canada, had 
packed up her boxes, stolen away early in the morn- 
ing, and got on board at Southampton, whither she 
had been traced. 

“Poor little Ann,” said Rene. 

“I told you she had courage.” 

“She has that. To go out to a new life ” 

“Our interference must have been intolerable to a 
spirit like hers. But what could we do? Even from 
you ” 

“It is horrible that disasters should interfere with 
human comradeship.” 

“It is horrible, but they do interfere.” 

376 


CASEY’S VENTURE 


“Does Cathleen know?” 

“Yes. I told her last night.” 

“Well?” 

“It seemed to bring home to her for the first time 
how terrible and ugly it was. You don’t mind my 
saying that, but the past always does cast its 
shadow.” 

“Yes. It can be dispelled.” 

“Only with time.” 

“Yes.” 

Lotta said: 

“I like the way you face things. There is no one like 
you for that — except Cathleen. . . . Where will you 
live now?” 

“For the time being, with Kilner, I think.” 

“I found him a little studio in Hampstead. He is 
delighted and happy with it.” 

“I’ll go there now, if you don’t mind.” 

Lotta gave him the direction, and in a few minutes 
by Tube he was with Kilner, whom he found hard 
at work at a new Adam and Eve, squaring the com- 
position on to the canvas. 

“It’s pouring money,” said Kilner. “Your twenty 
pounds came one day and the next I heard that two 
drawings of mine had been sold, a head of Old Lunt 
and a half-length of Martin patting a horse’s rump. 

. . . Casey’s been up here every day asking for you.” 

“Casey? What does he want? Money? I’m not 
a millionaire.” 

“The poor devil has to leave London. It’s eating 
up the little piece of his lung left by South Africa.” 

377 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“That’s bad.” 

“Seen anybody?” 

“Only Miss Cleethorpe.” 

“She’s a fine woman. I think I shall marry her. 
She’s twenty years older than I am, but that is just 
about enough to bring a woman within reach of an 
artist.” 

“But ” 

“Oh! she began it. We’ve already been down to 
her cottage in the country — I like that too. You’ll 
have to fork out for a wedding present.” 

“I’ll cancel your debts. But, are you really?” 

“Fourmy,” said Kilner, “you’re an incorrigible ro- 
mantic. I’m a realist, and like love’s young dream to 
remain a dream. Life is a long, slow, dreary busi- 
ness, and I want a woman I can live with. . . .” 

“Did you say that to Lotta?” 

“Not in so many words, but in effect.” 

“Well, I’m ” 

“You’re not a bit glad. You’re horrified. Com- 
mon-sense is and always will be sordid to you. Lotta 
and I cooked chestnuts over a fire. We shall go on 
cooking chestnuts till we die. How’s Ann?” 

“Gone.” 

“I thought that would happen. You and I busted 
her between us — her pride, her joy in living, her rather 
slovenly habits of mind. You didn’t know you were 
doing it. I did. I’m an awful swine. I told Lotta 
all about it — as we were cooking chestnuts. She re- 
fused to believe me.” 

There was a tap at the door, and Casey appeared. 

378 


CASEY’S VENTURE 


He rushed excitedly at Rene, and began to pour out 
an excited tale of how he had found the very thing, 
a livery yard at Rickham, thirty miles out of London 
to the northwest. 

“Our station,” said Kilner. “Lotta’s and mine.” 

“It’s a busy little town, but it needs brisking up, 
like you say, Mr. Fourmy; it needs motor-cars and 
a garage. That yard’s the very thing, only a hun- 
dred yards from the station. There are people with 
cars living near, but they have to go five miles for 
repairs, and the trades-people can’t have cars, because 
there is no one to look after them. It’s the chance. 
I’ve got an option on the yard till next week. Will 
you take it up? I’ve got a map. See?” 

He produced his map and showed the geographical 
advantages of Rickham. It had already good water 
and electric light. Its train service had been enor- 
mously improved, and it only needed the country round 
to be opened up. “Don’t you see, Mr. Fourmy, it’s 
your idea?” 

Rene had half -forgotten it. Casey explained, and 
showed the ring of little country towns round London, 
how they had come to life again, as markets, as cen- 
ters, and how in many of them factories were being 
built and all kinds of people were coming out from 
London to live in or near them. 

Kilner was interested, and said to Rene: 

“So you think that is how things are going to work 
themselves out? It’s an attractive idea, the country 
for food, a ring of industrial centers, and the ex- 
changes in the middle of it all. Some sort of shape 

379 


YOUNG EARNEST 


and design instead of the muddle we’re in. It might 
even make room for the artist.” 

Casey said: 

“When I heard you’d come in for some money I 
couldn’t rest until I’d found what I wanted, and there 
it is. Will you come in?” 

“I’ll go down and look at it,” said Rene. “I’m quite 
certain I can’t live in your Thrigsby or your Londons 
any more, and I couldn’t live in the country without 
doing the work of the country.” 

“Can’t see you as a farmer,” said Kilner. 

Rene promised to go with Casey the next day. 

He was enchanted with Rickham and with the yard. 
It had a small Georgian house attached to it, and the 
stables were built round a quadrangle with a gallery 
leading to rooms above them. Through the stables 
was a walled garden, and beyond that again a bowling 
green by the edge of a stream. The whole was free- 
hold and wonderfully cheap. Rickham apparently 
was not yet awake to its glorious future in the English 
democracy in spite of its two cinemas, and the strong 
Liberalism of its opinions. It had one church and fif- 
teen chapels, a Salvation Army barracks, and a public 
house every twenty yards. On the hill behind it villas 
were being erected, and along the valley little houses 
were being built for workpeople. On either side of 
the river just outside the old town the tall chim- 
neys of factories were rising by the steel skele- 
tons of new workshops. Clearly there was some 
truth in what Casey said. They undertook to buy 
380 


CASEY’S VENTURE 

the stables and walked into a lawyer’s office to give 
instructions. 

So certain had Casey been that Rene would come in 
with him that he had already engaged mechanics in 
London, and written up to various firms to apply for 
agencies. They were bombarded with applications 
from the local builders to carry out the necessary al- 
terations, and on the advice of their solicitor arranged 
a contract. Before any work was begun Casey insisted 
on having an illuminated sign, “Garage,” fixed above 
the gate, and below it, the name of the firm, “Casey & 
Fourmy.” 

“Looks like business, that,” he said, as they stood 
in the street and surveyed it with satisfaction. “Give 
the town something to talk about. No advertisement 
like talk.” 


VIII 


THRIVING 

“Were you married in a church, Ursula?” 

“We were not, brother : none but gorgios, cripples, and 
lubbenys are ever married in a church : we took each other’s 
words.” 

M EANWHILE his relations with Cathleen re- 
mained in abeyance. What she had accepted in 
the excitement of events, she needed to reconcile with 
her calmer thoughts. That was not so easy. She was 
brought to doubt of herself. She had been more 
hurt than she had realized, and she feared she was too 
weak for the suffering that filled her. For many 
weeks it was a pain to her to see Rene, for she could 
not but remember the destruction and misery he had 
brought into other lives. She had no support, for 
her rupture with her family had made an end of the 
ideas in which she had been instructed as a child, and 
she had no experience to draw upon, and Lotta’s the- 
ories, when it came to cold practice, vanished into 
the air. She could not avoid jealousy of the past; 
and, with that in her, she could not bring herself to 
take the plunge into a life so different from any she 
had ever imagined. Rene was so patient, and had 
382 


THRIVING 


flung himself with such ardor into his new work, that 
she had begun to tell herself that he had no need of 
her, that she too was in a sense his victim, since his 
meeting with her had enabled him to break with the 
past only to thrust the weight of it upon her. The 
superficiality of her conceptions was betrayed and 
made plain to her, broken up by one fixed idea, the 
thought of Ann’s child. How could he have let that 
go? How could he thrust that back into the past? 
How could his feeling for herself have broken clear 
of that? And Ann? How could she set thousands of 
miles between herself and him? If she had stayed, 
they could have wrestled with the reality. They could 
have made provision in their lives for the inimical new 
life. But Ann, in her desperation, had left them to 
deal only with an idea, a shadow, a memory. Rene 
apparently could ignore it. He was full of enthusiasm 
and happiness. He seemed to consider Ann’s flight 
as a declaration of independence and to acquiesce in 
it. Had he felt nothing at all? Could a man come 
in contact with that mystery and remain unmoved? 
Must not such defiance of Nature be fraught with 
appalling consequences, to end in the worst state of 
all, indifference ? 

She hugged her difficulties to herself, and dared 
speak of them to no one, for she was possessed by the 
shyness bred by a fixed idea. At last Lotta caught 
her out in deliberate avoidance of Rene and asked 
what had come to her. Little by little she dragged her 
trouble out of her, and tried to reassure her and bring 
her to reason. 


383 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“You should ask him about it,” she said. “He must 
have thought it out. He did not forget her. You 
must remember that. It was not a case of his feeling 
for you wiping her out of his mind. My own view is 
that Nature is entirely indifferent, and I don’t believe 
parents and children do naturally and inevitably have 
any feeling for each other. Indeed, Nature is so 
indifferent that our thoughts about it are rather im- 
pertinent. It is obvious that children do not always 
bind men and women, and I imagine they must often 
have the contrary effect; always, I should say, when 
they have for each other only the kind of selfish af- 
fection which resents any intrusion. Surely that is 
why so many women turn from their husbands to 
their children ” 

The word “intrusion” brought Cathleen to the crux 
of her difficulty. She saw, with some exaggeration, 
that this was her condition, and the quality of her 
affection, that she had been hungering for possession 
of her lover with no intrusion from the past. 

“O Lotta,” she said, “we are fools to set our faces 
against what cannot be altered. I thought Uiad broken 
away from narrow conventions, but I had only rid 
myself of the names of things, not of the things them- 
selves, the silly pretense that people wake for a mo- 
ment out of a sleep in which nothing can happen, love 
and go to sleep again. We are stupid, trying to keep 
all our loves separate. We can’t do anything but stum- 
ble from one love to another, can we?” 

“It is what all of us do, and Nature has to take her 
chance. It is degrading to have one’s folly and weak- 

384 


THRIVING 


ness, even one’s mistakes, used by Nature, but that is 
the way of the world, and I think a real love can al- 
ways get the better of it.” 

“I have tried so hard.” 

“You should see it from his point of view. Suppose 
it was you who had been trapped by Nature’s indif- 
ference. You would feel hardly used if he let jealousy 
stand between you and him.” 

“But Rene couldn’t.” 

“Perhaps. Why should you? It really does hurt 
me to see you two wasting time and youth, two abso- 
lutely free people in a world that takes its greatest 
pride in its waste- of opportunity. You are behaving 
abominably. Really, if you let him be much longer he 
will settle down with Mr. Casey, and discover that he 
can do at any rate comfortably without you, and keep 
you as an ideal. That happened to me when I was a 
girl. I let things slip by until I woke up one fine day 
to find that I was nothing but an ideal and had no 
hope of ever becoming anything else, even though I 
had married him. So I never did. Love changes, 
like everything else. It grows in us and dies. Very 
short is the time when it can be taken and built into 
our lives. If that time be let slip away then love 
dies down. If that happens, then life can never be 
anything more than amusing.” 

“If it should be too late?” said Cathleen, alarmed. 

“It won’t be,” replied Lotta; “he has been to me 
and I said I would send you down to him.” 

At the week-end Cathleen went to Rickham. She 
found Rene in overalls taking down the back axle of a 

38s 


YOUNG EARNEST 


car. His face and hands and hair were smeared with 
grease. 

“Hullo!” he said. 

And Cathleen answered: 

“I hope I’m not in the way.” 

“All right. Only stand clear of the machine. There 
never was such ubiquitous stuff as motor grease. I 
shan’t be long. It’s a broken crown-wheel, I think — 
Oh! here’s Casey. Casey, take Miss Bentley round 
the garden. Have tea in the parlor, and I’ll join you 
when I’ve cleaned up.” 

It was a couple of hours before Rene joined them. 
During that time Cathleen had to listen to his praises, 
and to hear how the business, after a slow beginning, 
had begun to pick up, until now they had almost as 
much work as they could do with their present 
staff. 

“I’m sorry,” said Rene. “It’s a new customer, and 
he wants the car for to-morrow morning, and I 
couldn’t take any of the men off their jobs. It is good 
to see you. Have you seen the house ?” 

No. Casey had only shown her the garden. 

After tea Rene took her over the house. 

“It wants you,” he said. 

“I knew that. I sent in my resignation yesterday.” 

“When will you come?” 

“In a month’s time.” 

“Forever and ever?” 

“It feels like that now.” 

“Yes. There doesn’t seem to have been anything 
hut you and I. You’re a little slip of a woman to fill 
386 


THRIVING 


the whole world.” And he lifted her clean off her 
feet. She lay back in his arms and her eyes closed, 
and he could feel her whole body surrender to his 
strength, her whole spirit come out to meet his in 
love. 


IX 


YOUNG LOVE DREAMING 

E VERY year they visited Scotland and brought new 
stores of happiness to the dell where they had 
first discovered it. Always, Rene declared, through 
their joy there ran the song of the burn, and the wind 
in the trees, the beauty that had first awakened him. 
,They made high holiday. Cathleen liked to stroll 
about the woods or lie in them with a book (she could 
hardly get him to read at all). He loved to wander 
over the moors alone or to go striding over the hills, 
and to come back to her in the evening. When they 
spent their days apart they would meet in the dell, 
and, as of old time, he would make a couch of bracken 
for her. And he would lie by her side and rejoice in 
her beauty, fondle her, praise her, tease her. 

“I don’t believe,” he would say, “we shall ever be 
old.” 

“Not when you look at the children” (they had 
three) “and see how they grow?” 

“Least of all then. I watch them and discover new 
worlds in them, and often through them I discover 
new wonders in you.” 

“Don’t you know me by this time ?” 

“Every day I find you more astonishing and strange. 

388 


YOUNG LOVE DREAMING 


Sometimes I come into your room in the morning and 
watch you sleeping, and I feel very lonely then. You 
are so remote. It is like waiting for the dawn. Then I 
see consciousness waking in you. Then your eyes 
open and you gaze innocently out upon the world. 
And you see me and are satisfied.” 

“And you?” 

“I know that another day has come, another op- 
portunity, a new turn in the adventure.” 

“Is it always an adventure?” 

“Always. Unending desire.” 

“For me,” she said, “it is peace and knowledge. 
It would be stifling if I had not you to kindle them.” 

Rene kissed her and laughed: 

“The whole duty of man,” he said, “to keep the 
flame alight in woman.” 

She became serious on that. 

“It’s true, Rene. You nearly let me wither away, 
and my life dwindle to ashes. I am often sick with 
fear when I think of it, how near I came to being one 
of your failures.” 

On such evenings they would talk until darkness 
crept into the woods, and they woke to their mysteri- 
ous night life when their sweetest songs are sung, and 
they are filled with magic snares and lurking dangers 
and conflicts. Sweet comfort was it to be together 
then amid so much menace and alien power, and they 
would go warily hand in hand until they came within 
sight of the lights of the great house. Then they 
would almost run until they reached the open lawn 
where the free air would beat upon their faces. 

389 


YOUNG EARNEST 


“I always feel,” Rene said once, “as though we had 
had a narrow escape.” 

“In the woods, do you mean, or in life?” 

“Both” 

“Escape from what, my dear?” 

“I know,” he said. “This is the truth of us. Escape 
from sleep and death.” 


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